Blog Post 6 - SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume of quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" or un-paid" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. (wikipedia.com definition).

What this says is that if a website is better at SEO then it will return better organic than an identical website that isn't as good at SEO.  This is very important from individual websites to large corporations.  With better organic results there is a smaller need for paid results.

To achieve better SEO on a website there are many different ways to go about doing it.  One would be to switch out any links that say "click here" to something more meaningful; like gallery or design studio.

There are many different ways that a website can be optimized, however the search engines area always morphing to stay on the cutting edge.  Therefore, putting more money into SEO then paying for search results might not be the best ROI for a business.

Blog Post 5 - Critique of Photoshop web layout tutorials

The three designs I chose to replicate were: Design a cool Photography Portfolio, Designing a Clean Photo Portfolio Site in Photoshop, and the Webstudio Layout Design.

The best thing about these designs are that they are free inspiration.  Each one has the ability to be customized.  Which in creating a website is very important.  There also were 27 different ideas on that blog.

The bad part about the designs is that they are over used around the web.  The first one I tried was because I have seen several sites with the exact same layout.  Knowing that you can start with that base design and change it seems to be a problem for some people.  They stick with the same colors and everything.  Also each one that I did (and maybe it was just my choices) were very graphic heavy.  That isn't good for a website.  The idea for an efficient website is to create it with the least load on you server.  These designs don't accommodate that.

Overall, I was very inspired by the different designs.  I will probably incorporate these into some of my future web designs.  I will just try to make them as good looking with less server calls.

Blog Post 4 - Define Design, Usability & Accessibility

From the started questions; designing for the web and for print are two different worlds.  My last job was for a hardware stores online store at their corporate office.  The department was in the same room that they sold the print flyers.  Many times I was approached to put a copy of the printed circulars on the website.  Time after time they failed.  No one wants to look at a static PDF page of flat images and text.  Finally they agreed to give me the data and let me build what I thought would work.  I created a department of the sale items.  It was searchable, sortable, and was much more adapted for the web.  So first hand experience says that print and electronic media are two separate beasts.

Design and usability are not the same thing; however, you website's design should be accessible and very user friendly.  In other words design encapsulates both usability and accessibility.

Accessibility is the ease that people can find the information that they are looking for on your website.  Usability is how easy they can get to that information.  When these work together with even a bad graphic design of a website can still make the website successful.

Blog Post 3 - Site Development

Website development is a very simple process if you look at it in the right way. The process starts with getting the requirements, goals, and any pieces that are going to be given to you from a 3rd party. From there a functional mockup of the base features should be started. With the users testing to ensure that is what they want and need from day 1. This process repeats itself as you add features and other pieces of the site. Once the site is complete the users would need to do some complete testing and then sign a user acceptance document.

My favorite part of the web development process is to write the code to the website. I enjoy creating the look of the site and then ripping it apart and creating the html and css behind the site. I am starting to look into php and .net so I can use some other functionality on the sites that I build. I also have been looking into incorporating HTML 5 into my sites, but I don't believe that all the browsers are compatible with HTML 5 yet. And not that I am lazy, but there is no point in writing efficient code just to have it fail or have to write alternate code for browsers that don't support all the features yet. We will get there soon enough.

Blog Post 2 - History of Internet

The history of the Internet:

Who knew, I thought Al Gore invented the internet! It was actually created in rare form back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was mostly used for intra-network communication; two or more stations could communicate with each other if they were on the same network. This officially was the start of the Internet, but none of us would recognize it.

In the 1980s there were many advancements to the Internet. More computers could talk to one another not being on the same network. Still this version is very foreign to what we are accustom to currently.

In the 1990s more and more computers were coming online and this created more of a demand online commerce and knowledge. The Internet in the 1990s was what most of us grew up on and remember it being extremely slow.

The most used features on the Internet from day 1 have been email and weblogs. Email has been around since the 1960s and weblogs just about as long, but didn't become popular until the late 1980s or early 1990s.

It is interesting to think that in 50 short years we have gone from computers not talking to each other to the current World Wide Web that we have now. I can't imagine what we are going to have 50 years from now.

Goals

My goals for this semester are to make sure that the web design and development for my customers are up to par. I have learned most of my HMTL background by being thrown into a job that required it. I am fairly proficient in the code that I know, but I am lacking the design skills to make it look pleasing to the customers. Sometimes I come up with good designs, but they do not come to me consistently.

My goals for the next 10 years are to be able to supplement my day time income with my side business of web design and photography. I am not sure which I enjoy more or which one my skills are better suited. Hopefully, in the next 10 years I can develop my skills in both and then I don't have to choose one or the other. I will probably stay in school until every school in Northeast Indiana gets sick of me!

My long term goals are to be able to leave my full time job and make my small business into something that can profit and sustain my household. However, if that doesn't work out I am sure that my skills will help my obtain a better job in the future.

My trouble spots in my plan are that I am not the most outgoing person, so hopefully the internet has something to help that! Also, I am apprehensive to building a shopping cart and checkout for customers. There is something about being responsible for loosing someone's credit card number that just doesn't sit well with me. So I would like to learn how to do that with the correct code and also be able to make it look good.

Exercise 4 - Domain Name

The domain name that I chose was my name. http://jaredhaagen.com. The reason I chose this domain name, well, because I have had it for about 2 years now. I actually own about a dozen domain names, but they are pointed at businesses, so I didn't feel it appropriate to put my school work on a company's website.

I didn't have any problems finding my domain name, however I did have trouble finding a domain name for Hillside Pools. We tired anything from hillsidepools.com to indianahillsidepools.com. They ended up settling on hillsidepoolsonline.com. It is a long domain name, but it was ultimately the owner's decision.

The features that I was looking for in a web host was that they would allow multiple domain names on one account, there was enough disk space and bandwidth to handle several small businesses on one account, and that they had 24 hour support.

I chose godaddy.com because they offered everything that I wanted at a decent price. They also had decent customer service (I made sure I had a reason to contact them before signing up with them). So far I haven't been disappointed.