I would like to take a quick moment to apologize to clients that have had to deal with unfortunate delays in projects and communications lately. I have been faced with some personal problems that have taken away from my business and I apologize. I will ensure that all are properly compensated for their delays.
One of the most common questions asked by those starting a new hosting company is how to get customers. While my answer is simple it is also complex: Walk a day in the shoes of your ideal client and put your name up everywhere along the way! This of course makes the assumption that you have both a target market as well as an advertising budget (which you should!). The hardest part of this solutions is figuring out just what your target market is.
While I cannot answer that question just for you I can tell you what your target market should be: unique! The area of budget hosting is a very flooded one where you will be forced to compete with existing companies that almost certainly have deeper pockets than you. With these deep pockets they can afford to offer the world to their clients and they’ll throw in 5 adwords credits and 2 kitchen sinks. If you were going to compete for clients who are into punk rock with pink mohawks on the other hand; you would be able to do a lot more with a lot less. While this is a funny niche to target a more acceptable one could be small unsigned bans. While I am not a band member (although I own a guitar that I can make a lot of horrible sounding noises on) I am a web developer, so let’s use that as our example niche instead.
While this will change depending on your market of course, let’s take a look at the day of a standard web developer. I usually wake up (can be at any time depending on my schedule) and fire up the computer. I get myself a cup of coffee and something to snack on as I start reading over some of my favorite blogs through Google reader. Just a list of a few blogs that I like:
Most of these sites run advertising and as a courtesy I browse them with AdBlockPlus turned off. Even with ad blocking most run a shout out to their sponsors for the week which you could advertise in.
After I finish with my morning reading I take a look through my e-mail which is hosted by Google Apps and as such has Google adwords displayed on it (I use the Standard edition). Yet another place you could advertise and I would possibly see you.
While working I often take breaks to browse a few different communities such as WebhostingTalk.com which you could be advertising on.
When I have questions I’ll often hit up Google which will usually take me to a question at Stackoverflow which would be a great place for you to participate in.
The list can go on and on but this should give you a good idea of where to advertise.
So now let’s assume you have me looking at your hosting site, it really needs to appeal to me with features I can’t get elsewhere for cheaper. If you are providing a standard cPanel / WHM hosting account that simply won’t do for me. As a developer I really need more then that. A short list of some of the features I would like to have in my hosting account:
As you can see some of these are simply configurations while others require you to have a special feature. If you were to take just the short list above and bundle it in a nice way on a landing page I would certainly be attracted to your offerings. One example of a great developer type of hosting is the VPS hosting provided by SliceHost. They may it very easy reimage your VPS, grab a different distro, etc… In addition the ability to scale up or down is as easy as can be.
Now go forth and take over the hosting industry!
Recently I was faced with the need to have a variable variable name for a piece of code. I was elated to find out that PHP does indeed have such a setup built right in!
Example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | for($i = 1; $i < 6; $i++) { $name = 'var_number_' . $i; // i.e. $name = var_number_1; $$name = $i * 5; // if $i = 1 then $$name would be the same as $var_number_1 and we would set it equal to 5 (1 * 5); } print($var_number_1 . "<br />" . $var_number_2 . "<br />" . $var_number_3 . "<br />" . $var_number_4 . "<br />" . $var_number_5 . "<br />"); |
Running this code should give you the output of 5,10,15,20,25.
I hope this helps somebody!
Photoshop has the reputation of being a photo editing (duh) based piece of software; however, many designers use it for web design as well. While it doesn’t boast about it’s vector based features I have found them to be wonderful in my years doing design work. My favorite feature of Photoshop when it comes to design work has to be the styles panel. As you can see in the picture I have a multitude of styles (many of which I have made over the years but most shown in the picture are from Talk-Mania. Using the styles panel and the shape features of Photoshop you can quickly and easily change the look of shape elements.
The first step in building a style is simple, we need a document to work on!
Once you have your new document to work on it’s time to create a shape layer to work with. Let’s start with a simple rectangle. To do this select the rectangle tool 
(windows keyboard shortcut is u). Draw a rectangle on your new document and give it a color (I went with red).
Once you have your rectangle drawn and colored it’s time to start working on the actual style. Open up the Layer Style window by double-clicking on the layer in your layer’s panel. You should see something like this:
Now to start let’s go and add a gradient. We’ll use a standard black to white and change the blend mode to soft light.
Now adjust the gradient so the colors meet in the middle like this:
Once you have that done drop the opacity of the gradient down to about 50% and you should end up with something like this:
Click on the New Style button in the Layer Style window and save the style.
Using this style you can quickly add flare to almost any shape in PhotoShop and adjust it using the actual shape color. Take a look at these examples!
Thanks for reading!
A domain name can be one of the most important parts of your website be it a personal site or for commercial purposes. In this article we are going to look at how to decide on the best domain name possible.
First let’s look at what a domain name actually is. A domain name is a unique name that will point to a place on the internet. The system used to point to this place is called the Domain Name System (DNS). Before the advent of DNS you were required to remember the IP address (such as 192.168.0.1) to access a machine on the internet. DNS maps a given name (such as http://zoodia.com) to the proper IP address 208.86.152.249.
Selecting the perfect domain name for your website will help with SEO, return traffic, and type-in traffic. While there’s many different strategies to choosing a domain name there’s a few tips that still hold true.
The shorter a domain name is the better it is going to be so long as it also meets the requirements below. An example of a good domain would be Zoodia.com (yes a shameless self plug). An example of a bad domain would be Mysuperawesomedesignstudiolikenoother.com (my apologies to anybody that purchase that domain). The simple reason being that a shorter domain name is both easier to remember as well as easier to type into a browser.
More often than not having a domain name that relates directly to your site will be the best type of name. This is not always the case (see Google.com, Amazon.com, Hulu.com, etc..). The main reason to keep a domain name in line with your site these days is for search engine optimization (SEO). By having the keywords you wish to focus on in your domain you can greatly improve your rankings. If you wanted to focus on something like “Chicago prom dresses” then the domain name ChicagoPromDresses.com would be perfect.
Word of mouth is still one of the most valuable forms of advertising around. By choosing a domain name that may be hard to pronounce you will lose out on this great method of advertising. If you were to select something like example.com anybody can pronounce that. As such when Jack tells Jill to go to example.com there won’t be an issue. On the other hand if you chose something like Yumalyz.com you may have issues. It could be pronounce “You-ma-layz”,“Yum-aly-z”, or a multitude of other ways. This makes it hard for one friend to tell another about it.
Hyphens have the same issues as unpronounceable domain names and then some. A hyphen is not pronounced and therefore requires extra explanation when telling a friend. That hyphen is often lost when the friend gets around to visiting the site.
Numbers will give you the same trouble you find with hyphens. When you tell a friend to visit “five fifty-five dot com” that could mean 555.com, 5FiftyFive.com, FiveFiftyFive.com, etc… As such it will be hard for said friend to remember the website.
For most sites .com is still the king. Even if you wish to have your main site under a separate extension (.org for example) it is a good idea to ensure the .com is available. This helps to avoid copyright problems (see below) as well as ensuring people that wish to go to your site get there. The most common extension on the web is .com and thus most people will go to domain.com before trying any other extension. If your site is example.org and there’s another site already at example.com then your advertising is going to be sending visitors to them that would otherwise end up at your site.
It is hard to look at anything with an objective eye and domain names are no exception to this rule. What you may be reading is not what everybody will see. One of the classic examples of this would be the domain DicksonWeb.com. When reading it like that it may be hard to see the problem, but lets try another way. DicksOnWeb.com. See the problem? Avoid those types of problems!
Make sure you stand out from the crowd.Following the latest trends may sound like a good idea, but the best idea is to start setting your own trends. If you are looking to make a move into the hosting market for example try to avoid using names with “Host” in them. There’s a million and one hosting companies with host in the domain name and you will get lost in the crowd.
Often times adding a simple word to your domain name can make all the difference. Instead of web.com MyWeb.com or TheWeb.com for example.
You want to stay out of legal issues at all costs. This means avoiding using existing copyright names in your domain name. While there has been a record of this being allowed from time to time (see http://paypalsucks.com/ ) the decision wasn’t reached without a legal battle which you will want to avoid.
I hope this article has helped you in some way! If you have any comments please leave them below.
As part of their ongoing client week over at FreelanceSwitch a great article was posted about getting on the same page as your freelancer today.
Freelancers have wide skill sets, but most don’t really offer mind reading. In order to make sure that your project is completed to your satisfaction, it’s important to carefully communicate with your freelancer. Even a relatively small miscommunication can affect the end result of your project, whether you need a website designed or copy written. And if a problem creeps in at a fundamental level, the way a freelancer executes your project can be very different from what you have in mind. The final project may be great, but if it doesn’t reflect what you originally wanted, you won’t be too pleased. Such situations can be avoided by making sure that you and the freelancers you work with are on the same page throughout each project.
From: Freelanceswitch.com
One of their points that I would really like to comment on is communicating with your freelancer regularly. As noted in the article this is extremely important on long projects but it is equally important on the short term projects as well. Assuming that everything is going the way you envisioned can lead to a lot of problems. We are all human and have our own ways of working, it is a rare case that those methods line up.
The easiest way to handle this is to simply check in with your freelancer from time to time and find out what is going on. Different firms will handle communications in different ways but I always like to provide an estimated time for the next step to my clients in the latest e-mail I send them. When in doubt get ahold of your designer and ask them where you are and where you’ll be going next!
With the current economy getting the biggest bang for your buck has become a big goal of those seeking web design. While you may resort to the idea of trying to barter a lower price with your designer he’s probably hurting too. Here’s 10 ways to get more bang for your buck from your web designer.
1) Offer to link back to his site in your footer for a small discount.
Even if you can’t get a discount out of it, odds are it will increase how much the designer likes you and thus he will be happy to go a bit farther in revisions and tweaks to your design. Link backs are an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and are valuable to many web designers.
2) Offer to write a review of the designer after the project is complete.
Much like offering a link back to the designer’s website, a referal will help said designer increase his or her business. The web design industry is quite crowded and anything that can help a freelancer to stand out is very valuable.
3) Have a good idea of what you want before shopping for a design.
Not knowing what you want in your design can lead to a lot of extra time and revisions for the designer. This will surely increase the costs to you as the client. By taking the time to look at other designs and bringing a specification list with links to sites you care for to the designer at the start of the project you can greatly reduce the work load and time to complete.
4) Have your content ready before you start.
By having all the text for your site ready to go before you start your designer can start figuring out how to lay it out at the beginning of the project instead of trying to shoehorn it in at the end. Fitting a design around existing text is always immensely easier than trying to fit text into a design. In addition to adding simplicity to the project it will let the designer create a more elegant design with all of the elements fitting perfectly together from the start.
5) Bunch together multiple changes in batches.
Many designers work on a revision system. That is to say that they will give you a set number of revisions to your website before charging extra fees. By grouping together multiple changes instead of sending them off one at a time you can usually reduce your total revision count for a project.
