Web Designers Corner

Posted by admin at May 30th, 2008

The posts describing the actions which have taken place between myself & Bluefur have been removed.  Litigation is in the process and the appropriate parties will be served.  The lawsuit stems from actions by Gary Jones & Bluefur.  As recently as May 27th, Gary Jones has posted links to 2 emails, one of which he claims is an email from Morris Rozen. I have never written any such email nor have I ever seen either of the emails prior to Mr. Jones placing them on the web.  I leave it to your own conclusions as to why these emails have been posted.

The emails were posted at http://www.bluefur.com/morris/ on May 27th but have since been removed.

I’ll keep you posted of any new occurences in this regard.

Morris

Posted by admin at May 21st, 2008

We are a small full service design agency in need of a creative/interactive web designer who will be responsible for all website, HTML email ads, and print related design projects. The designers time will be split between 50% Web and 50% Print projects. Please let me know if you have any recent graduates seeking full time employment within a fast paced creative environment OR if you could forward this email to a faculty member that may be able to assist OR forward this message directly to a potential candidate.

“Building Lasting Brands Through Total Brand Management”
www.bytethisinc.com

Posted by admin at March 13th, 2008

Bad Math is looking for full-time web developers!

We’re a small shop that does big projects, which means the work always stays interesting. We’re looking for creative problem-solvers who take initiative, can work independently and meet deadlines. The successful applicant will be working with us on building web applications - both on the server-side and the UI-side - at our King and Bathurst office in downtown Toronto.

Here are the must-have skills:

• PHP
• Javascript / DOM
• CSS / XHTML
• MySQL

Bonus skills:

• Linux
• Actionscript
• Other computer languages
• An eye for design

Interested? Here’s how to apply:

Send a resume and cover letter to jobs@badmath.com with the subject field “I want to code at Bad Math!”.

Be sure to explicitly point out your experience with the above listed skills. Examples of your work is a must! (Anything you send us will be kept confidential, with the utmost respect for intellectual property rights.) On any work that you show us, be sure to point out exactly which parts you did and, if applicable, which parts you didn’t do. Work examples can be anything from previous gigs to personal projects, so long as you feel there’s something to see.

Note that we cannot respond to every application we get, but if we like what we see, you’ll hear from us within a couple of weeks. No phone calls or snail mail, please.

Can’t wait to hear from you!

Posted by admin at February 18th, 2008

Some people feel that they can anonymously post articles that attack a business or person.  There has been a growing number of blogs posted that do exactly that,  make false claims that are meant to discredit a business or in other instances destroy a person.

While freedom of speech is  a value cherished by many, there is no right to create fictitious stories  and publish them online with the intent to harm someone.  The internet is instant and once something has been published online there is no way to guarantee that it can be completely removed.  In fact even if such an article is removed, if one person downloads it and passes it on, that article could go one forever causing damage as it passes from one computer to the next.

From reading recent court decisions, the courts too feel that online defamation can have a more detrimental and long lasting effect than in other arenas.

At least Blogger.com & Google have taken somewhat of a stand against faux blogs.  If brought to their attention a blog set up to appear as coming from another person will be removed.

So be vigilant and if you’re aware of a fake blog . . . report it.  Get it offline!

Posted by admin at February 14th, 2008

This request came to Derek from one of the past student sponsors.

“I am in the process of hiring a new web/IT person for one of the companies here. I thought I would ask if you knew of anyone looking for work that has some descent skills. The work right now is mostly updating content and skins in dotnetNuke, creating email templates and some other general IT work. Wordpress skills would be an asset as well. Software that we use is typical - adobe web suite. There are some CRM and CMS programs to deal with as well. An ideal person would have good web skills ( graphics/coding ) and the ability to pick up new programs fast.

This will be a contract position - full time hours - for three months with the objective of finding a permanent full time employee.”

Contact Morris for more details

Posted by admin at January 10th, 2008

Good Real Estate Agents.Com

• Looking for real estate information?
• How to determine what constitutes a good real estate agent.
• What you should ask an agent before signing a listing agreement.
• What to expect from a real estate agent.

Posted by admin at November 18th, 2007

Is there such a thing as a frames web page that is search engine friendly?  If you must build a frames page than there is a way for that page to be found on the search engines which worked well for me.

A number of years back I had built 3 web sites in frames.  Up until recently when these sites were revised they enjoyed good positioning within the search engines.  All three sites were able to be found within the top 10 results for their various keyword terms.

In fact 2 of the 3 sites were not only in frames but the main content frame within those sites were built in flash!

to be continued . . .  .

Posted by admin at October 26th, 2007

Getting on Google isn’t so difficult. Getting found on Google can be.

Once submitted or crawled by Google your web site is scrutinized for a number of items and Google using its methods calculates and places your site based on that information.

Here is a link to some very helpful insight into what Google looks at Google Ranking Factors

Posted by admin at October 26th, 2007

Here are some of the sites I visit for search engine information

• http://www.seochat.com/
• http://www.searchengineguide.com/
• http://searchenginewatch.com/

Check out some of the free tools that are available at seochat some are quite helpful

Posted by admin at October 25th, 2007

You’ve spent many hours building & tweaking the site and now at last you feel that your finished. However the realty is that until your site is found your far from finished.

Getting your site found is probably the single most difficult aspect of being a web master. You can hire one of the many specialists out there who will “Guarantee you top 10 ranking in Google” or you could start putting in a number of hours of reading, tweaking and effort.

Start with a good foundation

Good planning will go a long way in helping your site get a better ranking. There are a number of basic rules that I use on a regular basis when planning out a website and these rules help my sites get found in the major search engines.

1. Title tags should be search friendly and not a vanity placeholder. In other words if your website is about pets than use a descriptive title i.e. “Dogs Cats and other Pet information and pet services” rather than saying My pet website.
2. Use different title tags for different content in your site. Alter your title tags to match the different content of your pages such as the products page should use different keywords than your index page.
3. Meta Tags - some say meta Tags are dead and ignored. I say use them, use them wisely but use them.
4. Sitemap - create a sitemap of your site structure and include it within your site as well as create an XML Sitemap for Google.
5. If the key words or key phrases aren’t in your content don’t expect miracles. Content is King your keywords/keyphrases should be on your page at least 4 times and make sure that your content is valid and appropriate.
6. Images - if your pages contain images use the ALT tag to describe the image and when appropriate use your keywords within the ALT tag.

These are only a few of the basics that I employ when designing a website. I’ll go deeper into Search Engine Optimization strategies in the near future.