http://www.mefeedia.com/collections/cristina34/ http://www.mefeedia.com/images/new_logo.gif http://www.mefeedia.com/collections/cristina34/ Mefeedia.com frank@mefeedia.com 2682013 http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/2682013/
From : Web Design & Development Podcast by Engines of Creation.com
To freelance or not to freelance? Ok, not the most original introduction, in this episode Web Design Freelance Boot Camp we will discuss the pros and cons of working as a web design freelancer or what to look for if you are in the market to hire a freelancer. The following is an overview of the episode and should be used as a rough guideline of questions and concerns you should have when freelancing or looking to hire a freelance design or developer. show notes for web design freelance boot camp Benefits of Freelance Work The Dark Side of Freelance Work Freelance Best Practices Expand Your Team (Hiring a Freelancer) Sources methods of contact for your clients Your own website or online portfolio Provide contacts with references Set up a method of project benchmarks that keep your clients in the loop. Strive to meet goals ON TIME. Use a REAL invoicing tool like PayPal or Blinksale.com Contracts Agreements– Be Flexible Not Bendable back to top Expand Your Team (Hiring a Freelancer) what should you look for? Do they have an online portfolio or case study? How relevant is their portfolio? Sometimes you do Get What You Pay For. Are you really saving? If your freelancer is abroad, beware of culture / social differences. Do they understand your projects vision? 3-2-1 contact Protect yourself and your wallet back to top Sources & Resources The following resources are based on this episodes content and our listeners questions & feedback. ODP / DMOZ.org Getafreelancer.com Elance.com Sitepoint.com Freelance Lessons A List Apart Adobe Design Center Wikipedia Color Wiki Sitepoint.com Article on Design Principles back to top ]]> Sun, 04 Mar 2007 10:07:39 -0500 Web Design Freelance Boot Camp 3319875 http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/3319875/
From : Web Design & Development Podcast by Engines of Creation.com
Most web site owners would like visitors to spend more time on their website looking at their products/services or content, but getting people to stick around your website is not always the easiest thing to do. Website owners much like their brick and mortar counterparts simply don t understand why no one is buying their products, visiting their stores or why they don t receive business referrals from their website. There is something that I call the 5 W s of website visitors, if you don’t know your W’s it is going to be very hard to even attempt to understand your customer, so here they are: Who they are (Demographic information), Where they came from (referring site/search engine), What search term they used (keyword(s)), Where they went on your site (Visited pages) and What time did they spend on your site (Bounce Rate/Visit Duration). show notes for web analytics, a measure of success part two Listener Feedback s A Few Reasons Your SEO Campain May Be Sinking or Sunk Online Resources back to top listener feedback t the case I would uninstall the program, reboot and reinstall it, hopefully that will clear it up. The second question was why FlashPaper2 wasn t viewable to some users running IE7? It seems that after updating IE6 to IE7, you may find that .swf no longer display in the browser; this seems to be a VERY common occurrence that everyone says is fixed with the latest version of IE7 and Flash Player 9. However, I just recently upgraded a family member s machine to IE7 and I had the same issue. I was able to resolve the issue by logging in as an administrator and uninstalling the Flash Player, rebooting the machine logging in once again with full administrative rights then reinstalling the application. I hope that helps and feel free to drop me an email if you re still having issues and I will put my thinking cap back on. Question 2: Is Age a Hindrance to Marketing Your Services? Nicky a current high school student with a few years of web development under his belt called in from Colorado with the following: As a self taught web developer with my first website built in the 6th grade, I sometimes see my age and lack of traditional training as a hindrance to marketing my services to their full potential, how can I price my services without undercutting myself due to my age and experience. My second question is, I will be a junior this coming year and I am thinking about college, should I focus my studies on business or graphic design. Marketing your services as a freelance developer or firm is a very slippery slope that a lot of designers and developers struggle with every day. I am a firm believer that a great portfolio speaks for itself. If the work is quality work with quality design, build on that. I think the average customer won t be very concerned with your age if they feel confident you can not only get the job done but you will exceed their expectations. However, age can be a stigma to a lot of people as they equate it with experience. I would put extra effort into showing off your past web conquests and creating sales proposals and documents that are top notch. Show your prospective clients that you are just as pro as us old folk are. If you are meeting a client be prepared for the age issue to come up. Don t run from it; embrace it to show your clients how talented you are. I think you might be surprised how much it impresses them. To answer your second question, if you are truly interested in furthering your education in this field a solid background in both graphic design and business doesn t hurt. In fact I recommend it; anything you can learn to push toward your goals is a boon. I have a solid background in web design and development, but I didn t have any formal business training before I launched EOC with Dan in 2003. Suddenly I found myself awash in a world of little things like taxes, paperwork and federal forms that only a federal court judge would understand or even care to read. I really regretted passing on those business courses in college, not because I couldn t figure it out, but because I had to spend time catching up on topics that I could have learned when I had more time to do it. Mostly I regretted it because it took time away from doing what I love, running the business and building websites. Formal training isn t always necessary, but damn if it s not helpful. back to top why you need analytics If you want to know more about your site and your site visitors you need to know your W s, and using an analytics package to do so is the first step. With every client we work with we encourage an analytics package, with our SEO or web marketing clients it is required to use an analytics package. The information you collect using analytics is vital to know your visitors, and gage the effectiveness of your design, landing pages, search engine visibility and much more. You can have a distinct advantage over your brick mortar side of your business by knowing much more about your customers. You may have noticed when out shopping that some retailers ask you your phone number or zip code at checkout, this is their version of customer tracking. back to top the five W s Who they area: Looking at your demographic information you can view your visitors by cities, regions, states, and even countries. Use this information to understand your visitor, identify which regions or areas you should buy advertising in to gain more exposure, identify weak spots in your marketing reach and help you refine online PPC programs or other online advertising. Where they came from Your referring source is one of the best analytic information you can get your hands on. The referring source will tell you the referring website or domain that lead the visitor to your website and/or the search engine that served your listing to that visitor. If you are performing any online advertising you will to want to track your ad sources. Use this information to find out weather your ad dollars are a waste or the best money you ever spent. You can learn who is linking to you by looking at your referring sources, see if that content rich page you created is drawing any interest, or that article you posted in a Blog or forum is generating any visits. What search term they used: Find out if you are loved by Google, Yahoo, and others and weather you have a high relevancy for your targeted keywords by looking at your referring search engine and keywords used to bring visitors to your site. If you or your SEO have done your keyword research, and optimized your site correctly you will see in time that you will be begin showing up in search engines, and depending on how important your site is and how relevant your content is to your chosen keyword(s) you will generally show higher or lower than your competition. Keyword search terms can also work the other way, to point out services or products you should be selling, for example, let s say you make pudding in 3 flavors, vanilla, chocolate, and butterscotch but every time you look at your analytics you see that 25% of your visitors are actually looking for pistachio pudding. Since they don t find it, they leave. This may be presenting a great opportunity to give them some pistachio pudding and increase sales, after all proof is in the pudding: P. (Sorry, couldn’t help it) Where they went on your site: Your analytics should show your navigation or visited pages. Gage your most popular products or topics with your visitors, or identify dead pages or pages of little interest. But wait, sometimes just because a page seems dead it may not be your visitors telling you that the page is of no interest. It may be entirely your own fault; poor navigation, bad linking structures or just bad design could be at fault, maybe the page has errors or broken links. Analyze these poorly performing pages, fix any errors, and make some changes then look at the new data after time to see if your changes were effective. Do A/B testing, make 2 versions of a page and over time evaluate the results. You can do this type of testing with images, banners, links etc to see which promote greater click through, or sales. What time did they spend on your site: Your site Bounce Rate and visitor duration can be another tool that is useful in measuring effective website planning. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who viewed only one page, think of them as the channel flippers of the internet. It is a pretty good indication that they came they saw and didn t like it. Looking at the average time your visitors spent on your site for the most part this is good information that can help you determine if your page is sticky, but it is recommended that you look at the big picture and cross referencing is recommended at times especially when dealing with eCommerce sites. Again, time on your site may mean that your site is not sticky or visitors don t stick around. This can be a combination of a few things. Poor keyword research and usage: You might be capturing visitors that are looking for a term that means something else in another industry either by on site text, keywords or titles and descriptions or in online ads like Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, or other PPC or advertising programs. back to top a few reasons your seo campain may be sinking or has sunk Poor design, boring or just plain dull: Advertising mediums need to capture your attention, a website is advertising medium as well as informational. Neglecting the design and concentrating on the content is not effective and neither is the converse. With good design and effective ad copy you can entice people to read on, navigate through etc. getting people to take a look and capturing someone interest is a good first step to a purchase or sales inquiry. Slow loading pages: Slow pages can tank you site as well. In the land of quick and easy, fast food and express checkout people will not wait 15 seconds for your page to load unless you are their only hope for the content. Excessive page load times because of improper site design architecture or overuse of technologies, or poor hosting can cost you visitors. A lot of people have branded Flash as the demon of SEO, this is not so, use of technologies can actually keep visitors on your site, just plan to use them within reason, Flash is one of the best ad mediums for a site and can add a flair of interest, just keep page load in the back of your mind when working with any technology. Bad landing pages: You have the option to designate which page visitors land on when running an ad campaign or setting up your site for search engines. Many people are making big mistakes when it comes to the landing pages used for PPC advertising. I have seen some advertisers send people to a contact page to fill out a form. In my opinion this is death, you would be better off sending them to your home page. The last thing I am going to do is fill out a form to a company that I know nothing about. Some advertisers are targeting their product in their ad; let s say Pistachio pudding, but when people click on the ad they go to the main store page and are forced to perform yet another step. Don t make your visitors search for the pudding, you may be loosing customers forever, I know I get annoyed. Analytics is just one part of a great marketing strategy for your website. Many analytics packages offer many great features, this is just a sampling of all that is available to you, and ultimately choosing an analytics package depends on your specific needs. But I will equate not using a good analytics package (in combination with keyword research) to early submarine warfare or even guess work. If you would like to learn more about analytics or how your website, business or organization could benefit from its use contact us and we will be glad to go over solutions or questions that you may have. Also see our other Podcast on web analytics: Web Analytics a measure of Success” for additional information and technical explanations of web analytics. back to top Online Resources Learn About SEO on Engines of Creation.com Web Analytics by Wikipedia back to top ]]> Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:18:09 -0400 web analytics, a measure of success part two 1227950 http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/1227950/
From : Web Design & Development Podcast by Engines of Creation.com
Ok, so maybe you re a small business person in need of some SEO, perhaps you re an average Joe or Joanne with a personal blog and or website and you want to track how your visitors found your site, how they used it and what the downloaded off it. So many SEO questions so little time. Lately we have been receiving a lot of questions on SEO Analytic packages. What they are, what they do and where to start. Below you will find information that will help remove the mystery of analytic programs and what they do. show notes for Web Analytics, a Measure of Success What Exactly Is Web Analytics? A Few Analytics Terms for You to Digest Log Files Main Advantages Log files main disadvantages Main Advantages of Page Tagging Main Disadvantages of Page Tagging Who Needs Analytics and Why? Google Analytics, A Great Place to Start Online Resources back to top What Exactly Is Web Analytics? What exactly is web analytics? Web analytics is the measuring of data collected from the visitors to your website. This includes: search engines, spiders, bots, and of course people. The information collected can be a valuable resource to website owners, webmasters/designers, and an indispensable tool for search engine optimizers. Website Information is collected using two main methods: Log file analysis, which uses your web servers log files, is the data that is recorded by your web server ever time your website is transacted . The second method is page tagging which uses JavaScript code snippets that are placed into the code of your website which is usually tracked by a third-party server each time a page is rendered by a web browser. Log files have been always used by web servers, but interpreting the data was not a time effective measurement tool or considered an important phenomenon until that people discovered that a web analytics programs could be developed to show how popular a website was. As the web evolved so did log files, servers added an additional measure of page views and visits to give a more accurate account of human activity. Because of the addition of images to the web in the early 1990 s, accuracy became a challenge because log files did not make a distinction, the usefulness of the common log file was defunct, hence came the combined log file (same acronym better accuracy) which introduced page visits and page views. The method of Page Tagging evolved to address issues surrounding the inaccuracies of log files and as a business opportunity for web analytics companies. back to top A Few Analytics Terms for You to Digest A Hit: A hit is a record of any request for a file on the web server (this is for log analysis only) and includes images and every nuance of code that need to be pulled to render a page in your web browser, a single page request may generate double digit hit counts. Recording hits is an extremely inaccurate measurement of site popularity or traffic. A Page View (Log Analysis): Is a measure of file requests made to a web server whose file type is defined as a page. A Page View (Tagging Method): The page tagging method would define a page view as an occurrence of the script being run on a page. A Page Visit or Session: Is recorded as a single occurrence and most importantly is generated from only one user/client that has a set timeout for their session. So what does that all mean in the real world, well lets use an example. Johnny is surfing the web and goes to www.ilovebenaffleck.com, (and feel free to buy that domain because I checked and as of today it is available) when Johnny arrives at the home page he has made his first visit to www.ilovebenaffleck.com, even if Johnny visited each sub page it will only be considered as part of the same visit, however those individual pages will be considered a view, so when you see that your 5 page website has 600 views the amount of visitors is more likely less than 120. There is a current debate/conflict over which method of web site analysis is better; log file analysis or page tagging. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages. back to top Log Files Main Advantages Spiders: The majorities of search engine spiders, crawlers, bots etc. do not read JavaScript, and therefore cannot be tracked via page tagging. Files: - you can track PDF s, SWF s and measure downloads of files including your Bandwidth usage (I dispute this you can be creative and track the actual request via links) back to top Log files main disadvantages Server formatting Unavailability to alter server for more complex tracking yourself without purchasing your own server Under reporting/caching - If a user accesses a web page via an external proxy server, their visit may not be recorded by your web server, Problems also arise for sites that use an external content caching server. eCommerce transactions - Many sites use an external payment gateway for processing credit card payments. Often, depending on the setup, it is difficult to measure a purchase or action that has been completed, which is the key component to conversion tracking and ROI. back to top Main Advantages of Page Tagging Advanced tracking features are easily changed and added to 3rd party server No problems with caching No need to purchase your own web server back to top Main Disadvantages of Page Tagging JavaScript: 98% have it turned on 2% do not, so you will loose out on that minority. (But using a tiny image as a backup can be used with page tagging if JavaScript is not enabled, I am not sure of the effectiveness of this method though) Spider tracking: Most spiders are JavaScript illiterate. Cookies: if your page tagging analytics uses 3rd party cookies instead of 1st party cookies (client domain assigned) to track users/clients people with 3rd party cookies disabled will be untraceable or if they delete cookies and revisit the site they can be tracked as a false visit. back to top Who Needs Analytics and Why? OK, well that is a lot of information on some dry topics, so let s switch gears and talk about why this stuff is so advantageous to you if you own a website. First and foremost on most peoples minds is to make more money or be number one sort of an ego thing. If you can effectively track your users/visitors you have the advantage of seeing which pages users entered on, where they left, and how long they stayed. If you notice people come to your home page and run away, it is a good indicator that there is something that is wrong that needs to be addressed, essentially it is a message from the visitor that your page sucks . Good analytics packages will allow you to see what city your visits came from, not just a county or state. If you are running a PPC campaign for your widgets you might want to know that it would be more effective to run your ads in the Wichita area if that is where the majority of your website traffic originates. Web designers: Your analytics or server logs are an important resource as to page errors that are occurring. Additionally analytics is a good barometer for effective design and copy. Advertisers/marketers: Without analytics your landing pages will be without measure. The knowledge that your visitors came first through your landing page rather than the home page help s you gauge the sales Most SEO s know the importance of good analytics, but there are many SEO s who are starting out in the field, we all were/are there and everyday there is something new to learn. An analytics package that accurately tracks websites traffic is a good tool to present to your clients as a measure of success. Many clients eyes glass over when talking technical terms and do not understand ranking etc. (explaining these parts is a skill). Here is where the true advantage, if you tell them before you started they had 7 people/mo. visiting their website and now there are 700/mo. that will make an impression, unless of course they did not convert any sales, remember design is as important to a website as is usability and SEO. back to top Google Analytics, A Great Place to Start GA has robust and powerful tracking capabilities with few short fallings. Ideally it is an effective tool that integrates with Google s PPC, SEO s can utilize GA to track multiple client Google PPC campaigns while allowing for individual client access to each account by setting permissions and passwords. The Google analytics is a page tagging code using the urchin JavaScript tracking code, but is different from the separate urchin software that is available. The code is placed in each page of your website to track your page visits, views, unique visitors, Geographic s, funnel navigation and PPC manager and more. Google Analytics is Free. Google Analytics is one way we invest in our advertisers and everyone else who wants to create quality content on the web. With Google Analytics, you can get started today creating targeted, ROI-driven marketing campaigns and improving your site design and content. Our main recommendation is that anyone using page tracking like Google analytics is that you must remember that the JS code is only tracking successful page renderings, so your error pages will not show in your analytics unless .you create custom error pages and add the tracking code to them, you will be surprised at the 20+ different error pages that there are, I know I was, I think there is even one for a possible Elvis sighting. If you are using a server side coding language you may need to ask you host to enable to enable Check if file exists on your server for your appropriate file extension for your error pages to work. Another common mistake is not adding your tracking code to hidden pages such as contact page submission processing pages, although the user never sees that page in order to have the page tracked the JS code needs to be present and especially if it is part of your goal/conversion tracking. If you are in a quandary about the log file vs. page tracking issue you can quell your unrest with the knowledge that there are analytics companies that are offering both, and if you don t like them there are many hosting companies that provide good log file analytics packages for free to supplement your need for spider knowledge. back to top Online Resources Google Analytics nextSTAT Analytics by Wikipedia ShinySTAT back to top ]]> Mon, 02 Oct 2006 10:40:03 -0400 Web Analytics, a Measure of Success 2682011 http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/2682011/
From : Web Design & Development Podcast by Engines of Creation.com
When we are discussing dynamic websites with our clients or just shooting the breeze with other developers at our local watering hole, I am always surprised at how much is misunderstood about the power of ColdFusion and how easy it is to leverage that power. There are a multitude of server side programming languages available to the web and this is by NO means a podcast devoted to why ColdFusion is better than your programming language of choice. Rather an attempt to reach out and explain exactly what ColdFusion is and why you might want to consider it on your next dynamic project. Besides if I open up the my language is better than yours can of worms we will be answering angry email until well into 2007 lol With that in mind let s jump right in: show notes for Top Reasons to Use ColdFusion What is ColdFusion ColdFusion 8 (Scorpio) Announcement How the heck does ColdFusion Work ColdFusion - Simple and Straight Forward Behind the Scenes of a ColdFusion Page Request ColdFusion Architecture Brief Overview Why Use Coldfusion Who is Using ColdFusion ColdFusion Hard Facts Online Resources Sources t you just love corporations? Like most Web languages, ColdFusion was meant to provide Web developers with a way to talk to a database and display data on Web pages. As with many such languages, in the early days, it was not the most advanced technology, but it was one of the more simplistic to implement, understand and use with a gentle learning curve. An interesting fact; ColdFusion was the reason Microsoft released ASP, which was being developed by Aspect Software, a competitor of Allaire, Aspect Software was later bought by Microsoft because of the ColdFusion growing popularity with developers. So, in a round about way, all you ASP programmers have the ColdFusion developers to thank for your programming language! I bet that statement will get us some email, but it s true none the less. ColdFusion has grown leaps in bounds since its inception in 1995 and is being used in more than 75 of the Fortune 100; ColdFusion provides the power behind over 18 million pages on the public Internet. With the help of ColdFusion, companies like Allied Office Products, Bank of America, Boeing, FAO Schwarz, Hertz, Jaguar, and Simon Scorpio , it is scheduled to be released by the second half of 2007. The focus for Scorpio is innovation. Confirmed new features for Scorpio are the cfpdfform tag, which enables integration with Adobe PDF forms, image manipulation functions, Microsoft .Net integration, and the cfpresentation tag, which appears to allow creating and integrating with live Macromedia Breeze presentations. The CF Administrator is also reported to have a new Flex 2 interface, and there will be built-in server monitoring. back to top How the Heck does ColdFusion Work? ColdFusion is an application server, which in simple terms is nothing more than a piece of software that (usually) resides on the same computer as your web server that enables the web server to do some things that it normally wouldn t be able to perform, mainly ColdFusion functions, if you want to learn more about this visit our show notes for resources about ColdFusion at enginesofcreation.com/podcast. The ColdFusion Application server simply looks for pages or templates that have instructions written in ColdFusion s language CFML. The ColdFusion Application server then runs the code on the page processing any special processing instructions before handing it off to the web server and then to the browser for the user to see. This all happens in the blink of an eye and if you haven t made any programming errors the end user has a seamless experience and never knows the difference. ColdFusion isn t just an application server however, and as mentioned previously it has a very powerful and flexible language, CFML or ColdFusion Markup Language. CFML along with some HTML tags, CSS and whatever else you like to add to your pages allows the creation of some very powerful apps. ColdFusion is a tag based programming language based on standard HTML that is used to write dynamic web pages. Like any server side programming language it lets you create pages on the fly that differ depending on user input, database lookups, time of day or whatever other criteria you can come up with! ColdFusion pages really aren t that much different than your typical HTML page in that they still consist of standard HTML tags but these are mixed together with CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) tags. Just like with HTML there are some simple syntax guidelines to use when coding in CFML, but they are not overly complicated and you would be amazed at what you can accomplish with just a few lines of CFML compared to other server side programming languages. A few of the nifty things CFML can do: Read, Update and Delete information from a database Send and retrieve email Send and retrieve SMS or text messages Process form submissions Use conditional processing Work and interact with local files Create sessions, use cookies and more This list is by NO means all of what you can do with CFML in fact it s not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. You can interact with XML, Java back to top ColdFusion - Simple and Straight Forward With little or no effort you can begin coding applications that range from auto email functions, ColdFusion Flash forms to dynamic .pdf or FlashPaper 2 documents. EX: – Take the CFMAIL tag, this tag functions exactly the way it sounds, it sends an e-mail message that can optionally contain query output, using an SMTP server. All you have to do is pass it some values; perhaps from a form a user fills out or at the end of a checkout process to inform the user of the status of a transaction. I actually use it on our website to send an email to my mobile when we get a contact as well as an auto generated email to our office PC’s. This way I am always on top of things and I don’t miss a beat. As we already know ColdFusion is an application server used for the development of dynamic web sites, ColdFusion also supports other programming languages like server side ActionScript. More advanced users can use ColdFusion as a productivity layer above a J2EE platform or use ColdFusion as middleware in a service oriented architecture (SOA), generating SOAP or RESTful web services or Flash remoting. ColdFusion can also handle asynchronous events such as SMS and instant messaging via its gateway interface, available in ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition. If your eager and want to start right away, Adobe allows you to download a fully functional developer edition to use as a robust developing tool. The free developer edition even comes with the ability to test SMS messaging applications. back to top Behind the Scenes of a ColdFusion Page Request To better understand how ColdFusion works, let s preface with how a website functions in general. A website is a collection of files that reside on a server. The web server handles requests for those files. When a user types in a web address, clicks a link etc. to visit a web page they are asking their browser to make a request for that page. When a web browser requests a static web page such as an HTML page, the web server locates the file in the file system and then sends it back to the browser for display. When a page in a ColdFusion application is requested by a browser, it is automatically pre-processed by the ColdFusion Application Server. Based on the CFML in the page, (indicated by a .cfm extension of .cfc), the ColdFusion Application Server dynamically constructs the page before delivering it to the web server. the Application Server executes the application logic, interacts with other server technologies, and then dynamically generates an HTML page which is returned to the browser. Based on the CFML, the server may interact with database servers, the file system, mail servers, and potentially other applications and systems. The output from ColdFusion can be HTML, WML, XML, and even application-specific content, such as data for Flash or desktop applications such as Microsoft Excel. back to top ColdFUsion Architecture Brief Overview ColdFusion is built on a completely standards-based infrastructure; ColdFusion Server includes an embedded Java server based on the Adobe (formerly Macromedia) JRun technology. This proven infrastructure provides the runtime services for ColdFusion applications, including high-performance connectivity to databases, Internet protocols, and components; a standards-based web services engine; and resource management features like database connection pooling, thread management, and security, complete with the ability to sandbox developers for ease of project management. In addition to providing tighter integration with Java technologies, ColdFusion also offers support for the Microsoft .NET architecture. ColdFusion includes continued support for Windows and integration with the .NET Enterprise Servers, including IIS, SQL Server, and Exchange. ColdFusion also makes it easy to integrate with applications built using Microsoft technologies through native support for the COM component model and integration with .NET web services. On top of this powerful infrastructure, ColdFusion provides an enhanced version of the rapid server scripting environment and built-in application services that have made ColdFusion wildly popular. back to top Why Use Coldfusion? Ok, now that we know exactly what ColdFusion is and what it s made of not to mention a smattering of what it s capable of let s investigate why you should use ColdFusion. ColdFusion Provides Powerful Internet Capability. Developers, businesses and clients love options, control and power over their application and I say the more control the better. ColdFusion delivers powerful Internet capabilities within an easy-to-learn and highly productive server scripting environment that can truly empower users and site owners alike, which is why ColdFusion has a very committed and happy community that is constantly growing. It s EASY - Deliver applications in record time. Intuitive tag-based language that requires fewer lines of code by handling low-level programming tasks automatically and simplifying code reuse. Server-side ActionScript that enables Macromedia Flash developers to use the same scripting language for both client and server logic. Complete support for new ColdFusion features within the Dreamweaver development environment, including powerful visual layout and prototyping, enhanced code editing and development capabilities, and integrated debugging POWERFUL - Deliver a more compelling user experience. ColdFusion provides a robust architecture and rich set of built-in capabilities that deliver high performance and scalability and enhance your applications with advanced functionality. Fully integrated application services for adding full-text search, dynamic charting, and high-performance connectivity to Macromedia Flash clients to your applications. Innovative architecture that delivers the scalability, reliability, and power of the Java. Platform without the complexity. Complete extensibility via custom tag libraries, reusable components, Java/C++, and thousands of available third-party add-ons. OPEN - Leverage the latest industry standards and infrastructure. ColdFusion supports open industry standards and easily integrates with your existing technology infrastructure. Highly approachable integration with all of the major Internet standards and component models, including XML, web services, Java, .NET/COM, and CORBA. Support for developing and deploying applications on a standalone ColdFusion Server or on leading Java application servers such as IBM WebSphere. Support for the leading server operating systems, web server software, mail servers, directory servers, file systems, and relational database management systems. ColdFusion Is Popular and Cost-Effective Investing time and effort into learning and integrating a Web programming language can be difficult work because creating large-scale applications can be very expensive, not to mention time consuming. Presumably, you re going to have to live with the environment that you select for a long time. For these reasons, you want to make sure that your language will continue to grow in the years to come and that it is capable of performing the heavy-hitting transactions that you ll require of it. ColdFusion is trusted on some of the most transaction-intensive, sensitive sites on the Web. For example, Bank of America, the United States Senate, use ColdFusion to get their work done. Perhaps the reason it s so popular is that, using ColdFusion, you can do a lot more than write dynamic Web pages and shopping carts. You can do really fantastic things with standard language elements that would require dozens of lines of code or custom tags in other languages. (This saves development time which saves you money) Efficient Data Interaction You can use a subset of XML called Web Distributed Data eXchange (WDDX) to serialize and expose packets of data as generic XML. You can also perform file and directory manipulation, perform full FTP interactions, and create intelligent agents. It is easy to interact with LDAP servers with just one ColdFusion tag. You can create database-driven graphs and charts in Flash all through ColdFusion. Customized Tags Pimp my cfride As in JSP (JavaServer Pages), you can create your own extensions to the language, custom tags. You can write custom tags in ColdFusion, C++, or Java. The ColdFusion Developer s Exchange and other Web sites have thousands of free custom tags available for download. These tags range from very simple utility tags to full-blown applications. As a developer this means that odds are you won t have to recreate the wheel when it comes down to a development time crunch. Cost Effective back to top Who is Using ColdFusion? More than 300,000 developers at over 10,000 companies worldwide rely on ColdFusion to build and deploy powerful web applications faster than any other technology available on the market today. ColdFusion is in use at 75 of the Fortune 100 companies and at more than 10,000 other companies worldwide. A few of the more notable companies that power their online applications with ColdFusion are: windowsitpro.com quark.com American Psychological Association (apa.org) 192.com ACD Direct Allied Office Products America First Credit Union American Power Conversion Amkor Technology Aspen Skiing Company AT s Corporation Seattle Times United States Senate Siemens Simon back to top Online Resources ColdFusion developer edition download Adobe ColdFusion Developers Center Adobe ColdFusion Exchange Ashwin Mathew s MAX presentation on the CF8 server monitor Adobe Labs page Ben Forta’s Blog Wikipedia House of Fusion back to top Sources & References Macromedia Coldfusion MX7 Web Application Construction Kit Adobe.com About.com Wikipedia back to top ]]> Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:02:45 -0500 Top Reasons to Use ColdFusion 1840697 http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/1840697/
From : Web Design & Development Podcast by Engines of Creation.com
It can be really frustrating if you re new to the design re probably already thinking, You can use Google or some other search engine to find all the information or resources you need . Well you re right, but only partly. While Google and the majority of other search engines are great to hunt for information, it can be confusing as to which site offers what you really need or really want to know, especially if you are new to the industry. Odds are that the more experienced designers 1. Web Developer Toolbar 2. Pixie 3.1 3. A List Apart 4. Multiple IE 5. Google Toolbar 6. Firebug 7. Macromedia/Adobe Flashpaper 2 8. Adobe Design Center 9. Adobe Developer Center 10. Lynda.com 11. CSS The Missing Manual 12. W3Schools 13.Open Cube Infinite Menu 14. Istock.com 15. jQuery AJAX Library 16. Typetester 17. W3C Markup Validation Service 18. W3C CSS Validation Service 19. ColorSchemer 20. sIFR Sources 600 or Custom Size) Tools for Validation. View Source And More Cost: Free Get It Here back to top 2. Pixie 3.1 from Nattyware Pixie is a great little utility, fast and tiny it a perfect fit for Webmasters and Designers. Pixie is a color picker that includes a mouse tracker. If you see a color on a website, document, or any other source that you particularly like, run Pixie and simply point to a color and it will tell you the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that color. You can then use these values to reproduce the selected color where needed. Once you start using a color picker you won’t know how you ever lived without one. Cost: Free Get It Here back to top 3. A List Apart A List Apart explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices. It is a huge resource with contributions by many well known and respected designers, technologists, programmers and more. It is a trusted source for quality commentary and discussion and they encourage contributions of high quality from anyone. Cost: Free Visit A List Apart back to top 4. Multiple IE Ever wanted to test your website in various versions of Internet Explorer? Testing in multiple browsers is an important part of testing when developing websites, testing in multiple platform versions of Internet Explorer on the same machine used to be impossible without over-writing the previous version. Luckily in November 2003, Joe Maddalone overcame this over-writing obstacle by exploiting a known workaround to issues involving DLL called DLL redirection. Manfred Staudinger perfected the standalone versions by adding IE version numbers to the title bar of the standalone browser window. Moreover, by removing the IE key in the registry Internet Explorer defaulted to respecting conditional comments based on the version number pre-built in the program. Yousif Al Saif of Tredosoft created this handy installer which contains IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6. Give this a try, I don t think IE 5 should even be dignified with an install, but that would depend on your audience (people still running Windows98 that have never upgraded their IE). I can t say that this tool works flawlessly but we have not had any issues to date and any problem identified can be sent to the developer who from what I see from their Blog is quite active and helpful in any debugging issues. Cost: Free Get It Now back to top 5. Google Toolbar Besides the option of always having a reliable search engine right in the browser, the toolbar contains a built-in pop-up blocker that works great and many helpful add-ons such as spell check, RSS subscribing with one click, instant Blog posting, using Blogger of course, word translation, Gmail integration, an info button that is useful for backlinks and probably most notable feature is the Google PR feature that is handy when you need to get a general idea of Page Rank for a website. These are only a few of the many features at a glance, while you might only use a few of these on your toolbar, the ones you do use make a difference in your browsing experience and workflow. Cost: Free Get It Now back to top 6. Firebug One of our favorite development and debugging tools that we use on a daily basis is Firebug. Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. I use this constantly and I honestly can t give it enough praise. You have to give this tool a try if you re a designer or a developer because it will definitely make your work life run smoother. Cost: Free Get It Now back to top 7. Macromedia/Adobe Flashpaer 2 FlashPaper 2 allows anyone to convert printable files into Macromedia Flash documents or PDF files with one click. This is a great tool to create documents quickly and easily for clients or your websites visitors. We covered FlashPaper2 in one of our previous Podcasts if you want to hear more about the great features visit http://enginesofcreation.com/podcast/?p=6 FlashPaper2 is a great alternative to PDF, the text is crisp and the user interface is pleasing to the eye, easy to use and load time is a fraction of the time compared to .pdf. Some of the things you can accomplish with FlashPaper2 Instantly generate Flash documents that can be accessed by over half a billion web users, or transform files into secure, compact PDFs for e-mailing, archiving, and printing. Cost: Free Trial - $79.00 Get It Now back to top 8. Adobe Design Center Complete with a Think Tank to see how today designers engages with technology. There is a focus on broader issues involving the relationships designers have with developing technologies, tools and the impact they have on society. This may sound more academic but is more or less how Adobe wants this to function. By reading through the articles you will get a sense of how designers Design Box Section that focuses on motion graphics and tons of tutorials on how to use Adobe products. Cost: Free Visit the Adobe Design Center back to top 9. Adobe Developer Center This is a great place to go for information in developing in anything from CSS, Flex, ColdFusion, Flash, XML and More. This side of Adobe is definitely geared to the developer with a focus on code, programming etc. If you are looking for a resource to learn, re-enforce, or build your knowledge there is plenty of information for all skill levels with links galore to articles and tutorials. Cost: Free Visit the Adobe Developer Center back to top 10. Lynda.com Lynda.com is an award-winning provider of educational materials for creative designers, instructors, students, and hobbyists. Lynda.com features an online training library full of training videos with exercise files with a large assortment of topics lead by ell know professionals in their respective fields. Courses are available online or available on CD or by Book. They are constantly adding new titles and do listen to user feedback when considering which topics to expand their training library with. Each lesson is very well recorded and broken into short sections usually 2-5 min in length, perfect attention span oriented time limits. Exercise files are available with different subscription levels and include everything you need to re-create the project (excluding software) and useful resource links mentioned in the video. Cost: Free Trial - $200.00 a Year or $20.00 a Month Visit Lynda.com back to top 11. CSS - The Missing Manual I really enjoyed this book and I find it to be an excellent CSS reference and recommend it for anyone looking to learn CSS or just up their CSS game in general. The book didn t read like a manual, which is a good thing because god knows I read enough of those already. The author David McFarland combines realistic and crystal-clear explanations, real-world examples, a dash of humor, and dozens of step-by-step tutorials to show you ways to design sites with CSS that work consistently across browsers. You ll learn how to: Create HTML that s simpler, uses less code, is search-engine friendly, and works well with CSS Style text by changing fonts, colors, font sizes, and adding borders Turn simple HTML links into complex and attractive navigation bars-complete with CSS-only rollover effects that add interactivity to your Web pages Style images to create effective photo galleries and special effects like CSS-based drop shadows Make HTML forms look great without a lot of messy HTML Overcome the most hair-pulling browser bugs so your web pages work consistently from browser to browser Create complex layouts using CSS, including multi-column designs that don t require using old techniques like HTML tables Style Web pages for printing Cost: $34.99 Buy This Book Visit The Authors Website back to top 12. W3Schools At W3Schools you will find all the Web-building tutorials you need, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, SQL, Database, Multimedia and WAP. W3Schools is a free site dedicated to the learning of web practices. There are many tutorials offered in a wide array of subject matter related to web design. W3Schools also offers tests to measure your knowledge on a subject which may be followed up with a certificate exam at a low cost. This is a great way to develop a basic learning plan. The certification exam offered must be supervised, but you get to pick who that is, so your best friend is not a good pick, neither is your dog. I would try for an academic sort like a professor of computer science this will help to give your certificate more weight if you intend to use it as a job placement tool. W3Schools is not accredited so any certificate is worth more to you as a personal accomplishment, or to your employer as a measurement tool. W3Schools tutorials are recommended at over 100 universities and high schools over the world. Cost: Free Visit W3CSchools back to top 13. Open Cube Infinite Menu Sometimes it pays to have an excellent drop menu system that you don t have to create from scratch for a client, especially if it is fully compliant and browser friendly to boot. Drop menus are notorious for being tricky to implement and buggy, not to mention search engines don t always crawl them properly, until now. If a drop menu is needed we recommend Infinite Menus by Opencube.com. Infinite Menus is the only Zero JavaScript Pure CSS menu commercially available, our unique visual interface and optional scripted add-ons make site navigation a snap. Dual mode hybrid / pure CSS navigation is light-years ahead of the out-dated DHTML based drop downs still being offered by other software companies. Here are just a few advantages Naturally Search Engine Friendly without added markup. Fully accessible and 508 Compliant. Fully functional with or without JavaScript in all CSS2 browsers. Main menu functionality in non-CSS2 browsers without JavaScript. Zero load time, menu renders and functions immediately. Super tiny footprint is high traffic compatible. Cost: Free Trial, $139.00 - $389.00 Get It Now back to top 14. Istock.com This massive collection of royalty-free images is an excellent resource for photographs, vector Illustrations, Flash files, and Video clips, it is free to join istockphoto.com, and the benefits of joining include a wonderful light-box feature that allows you to save items in folders to reference later. When working on projects you will find it particularly useful to create a light-box with the client s name and save images there so that your design team can look at, add or delete items, this can be done from any location within a browser. You can also email you light-box to your clients so that they may view your selections, or create an account with a light-box for them to choose their own images. This can shift the workload over to the client and allow them to be more involved in their own project. Image prices are reasonable, although there has been a recent change in the pricing format; they are 99% cheaper than rights managed stock photography websites. X-small images start at a dollar and go up to XX-Large for around 15 bucks. Anyone can apply to contribute images to iStock s collection. You can apply to become a photographer, illustrator, or videographer. Once you are accepted, start uploading files, and earn royalties when your images are downloaded. If you are a good photographer and want to earn some extra cash this is a great option. Cost: $1.00 USD s life easier by creating a common set of rules. All we need now is for the major browsers to listen and play nice as well. Cost: Free Visit the W3C Markup Validation Service back to top 18. W3C CSS Validation Service Just as it is important to validate your XHTML pages it is just as important to validate your CSS. A great free validation service is the W3C CSS Validation Service, which will check your Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and (X) HTML documents with style sheets. It will even give you a list of warnings so you can address potential issues before they arise. Remember, although validators find errors in your page s source, they do no ensure that it will appear as you want in various browsers. It merely ensures that your code is without HTML or CSS syntax errors. Ensuring that your code appears correctly in different browsers require cross a lot of browser testing. To ensure that your website appears as you want in various browsers, you should test as you build in multiple browsers. Cost: Free Visit the W3C CSS Validation Service back to top 19. ColorSchemer There are a ton of Color Wheels on the web; Colorschemer does a good job of providing a useful tool that is not complicated or technical for the exploration of color for your projects. The full version is reasonably priced and there is a 15 free trial for you to evaluate. Colorschemer allows you to save selected colors as favorites, has a built in drag and drop tool to simulate a basic web site design, and you can share your color creations with other users by uploading them to the web. There are many features that you may use to your advantage. There is a color blindness simulator, color mixer, switch from color wheel to swatches, ColorSchemer will even give you suggestions for color schemes, and a lot of other bells and whistles put together in a nice user interface familiar to windows users. Have fun, share your colors and hopefully this makes your life a little easier. Cost: Free Trial - $49.00 Get It Now back to top 20. sIFR Have you ever wanted to retain your non system composition fonts and avoid making them an image so the browser will render them properly? Than sIFR is for you! sIFR lets you use your favorite font on your websites by cleverly working with Flash, JavaScript and CSS. sIFR is a method to insert rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics. That to me is worth its weight in gold. I have always hated being confined to system fonts or having to create images for headlines, which makes them time consuming to change and hard for search engines to index, not to mention throws semantic layout out the window. sIFR solves all these problems and is quite easy to implement . sIFR or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be styled in whatever font the designer chooses sIFR requires JavaScript to be enabled and the Flash plug-in installed in the reading browser. The really cool part is if either condition is not met, the reader s browser will automatically display traditional CSS based styling - the user won t know the difference. That s the part that makes sIFR a safe alternative to image headers or plane Jane fonts. Does this mean that you should use a font face that no one can read? Absolutely not, although sIFR can do it, you should always ensure that whatever font that you choose is legible and reasonable in its use. You wouldn t want to use sIFR on a whole page for instance, it wouldn t be efficient and system fonts are fine for your actual page content anyway. If you want to add some style to your headers however, it can t be beat. Cost: Free Get It Now back to top Online Resources Resources for this entry and information pertaining to each resource was retrieved from the products or authors web site. back to top ]]> Fri, 19 Jan 2007 20:44:21 -0500 20 web design resources you shouldn’t be without 2133040 http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/2133040/
From : Web Design & Development Podcast by Engines of Creation.com
To freelance or not to freelance? Ok, not the most original introduction, in this episode Web Design Freelance Boot Camp we will discuss the pros and cons of working as a web design freelancer or what to look for if you are in the market to hire a freelancer. The following is an overview of the episode and should be used as a rough guideline of questions and concerns you should have when freelancing or looking to hire a freelance design or developer. show notes for web design freelance boot camp Benefits of Freelance Work The Dark Side of Freelance Work Freelance Best Practices Expand Your Team (Hiring a Freelancer) Sources methods of contact for your clients Your own website or online portfolio Provide contacts with references Set up a method of project benchmarks that keep your clients in the loop. Strive to meet goals ON TIME. Use a REAL invoicing tool like PayPal or Blinksale.com Contracts Agreements– Be Flexible Not Bendable back to top Expand Your Team (Hiring a Freelancer) what should you look for? Do they have an online portfolio or case study? How relevant is their portfolio? Sometimes you do Get What You Pay For. Are you really saving? If your freelancer is abroad, beware of culture / social differences. Do they understand your projects vision? 3-2-1 contact Protect yourself and your wallet back to top Sources & Resources The following resources are based on this episodes content and our listeners questions & feedback. ODP / DMOZ.org Getafreelancer.com Elance.com Sitepoint.com Freelance Lessons A List Apart Adobe Design Center Wikipedia Color Wiki Sitepoint.com Article on Design Principles back to top ]]> Sun, 04 Mar 2007 13:07:39 -0500 Web Design Freelance Boot Camp