How to Build Your Own Web Site With Little or No Money: The Complete Guide for Business and Personal Use

This is a great new book by Bruce C. Brown that helps people get started who have never made a website themselves. It goes over many topics including SEO and give many interviews by professional web designers of their recommendations to people just starting out wanting to take the do-it-yourself approach with web design.

I’m one of those interviewed in the book (pages 605-610). I describe the process someone should use to determine what type of elements to put on their website, different ways to sell products online, web design products for beginners and more. There are tons of other interviews  just like mine and the same questions are anwered by each designer. It’s definately a great book to purchase to just get a grasp on how to start a website yourself with very little (or no money).

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

Some of the features include the ability to:

• Configure and manage multiple blogs
• Comment moderation including the ability to reply to comments
• Create and Edit Posts including categories, tags and photos
• Create and Edit Pages
• Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

Here is a brief video showing the app in action:

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

There’s another WP upgrade to 2.9.2. The problem is with logged in users, they can peek at trashed posts belonging to other authors. If you have untrusted users signed up on your blog and sensitive posts in the trash, you should upgrade to 2.9.2. Or you can upgrade in your blog administration by clicking on Tools->Upgrade to upgrade.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

You can view some info right from Adobe http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/flash_player_101_coming_to_mot.html of Flash Payer 10.1.

You can watch this video of Flash Player 10.1 on Motorola Droid

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

Version 2.9 should be available soon but it’s still being tested http://wordpress.org/development/2009/11/bug-hunt-in-progress.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

It’s recommended that the upgrade be performed. I just upgraded a couple of my sites with no issues (so far). Read more about the upgrade here http://wordpress.org/development/2009/10/wordpress-2-8-5-hardening-release. You can either upgrade right in your blog administration if you’ve manually installed WordPress or you can just download the new version at http://wordpress.org.

You can also hire me to upgrade your blog for you. I offer WordPress Installation http://sweetboutiquedesign.com/item_26/WordPress-Installation.htm.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

The new Pantone colors for fall 2009 are pictured above, which I absolutely love this year. The colors are so vibrant and inspiring! Click here to read the full Fall Fashion Report from Pantone. Make sure you check out all the great color tools Pantone has to offer for any design project you’re working on at www.pantone.com.

The Top 10 Pantone Colors for Fall 2009 listed with color formulas:

1. PANTONE 19-1759 American Beauty C=19 M=100 Y=72 K=8
2. PANTONE 18-3520 Purple Heart C=64 M=72 Y=0 K=0
3. PANTONE 16-1143 Honey Yellow C=15 M=36 Y=75 K=5
4. PANTONE 18-1306 Iron C=50 M=51 Y=52 K=29
5. PANTONE 17-1544 Burnt Sienna C=16 M=70 Y=63 K=0
6. PANTONE 16-1212 Nomad C=26 M=28 Y=45 K=2
7. PANTONE 17-1929 Rapture Rose C=10 M=66 Y=29 K=0
8. PANTONE 15-0646 Warm Olive C=24 M=12 Y=98 K=0
9. PANTONE 19-4125 Majolica Blue C=91 M=59 Y=32 K=50
10. PANTONE 13-1006 Crème Brûlée C=9 M=11 Y=23 K=0

As with any image shown on the web, the colors in the picture above may match the color standards listed above. So please make sure you use the formulas that are typed and don’t just color pick the images.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

Adobe now has a way to find a font for your next design project at http://www.adobe.com/type/- There are over 2,500 fonts to choose from in many different categories. You can search for fonts using their keyword search tool or use the Font Finder to locate the perfect font by classification, style, use and more. Another way to find fonts is by categories, collections, by font designers. I’m looking forward to using this nice tool from Adobe in the future. I also have my eye on Adobe Font Folio 11. Ooh, that makes me excited! There are over 2,300 fonts from the Adobe Type Library in OpenType® format. Font Folio 11 is a great selection of typeface for print, web, video, and electronic documents that has true cross-form compatibility.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

First, a client needs to do their homework on what type of designer they want and what that designer’s experience or credentials are. Do they only work with certain hosts or systems? There are many solutions for a website design. For example, one CMS or shopping cart isn’t right for all businesses. Next, the client must know their budget, realistic time frame and what their business model and goals are. Without a solid understanding of a client’s own business model and goals for the business, developing a website for that business can be challenging. The next most important thing is for a client to understand that the design firm they decide to hire is a professional business, the same as a law firm or architect. Designers (again firms large and small) have set hours they work by and they need to be respected. Also, these firms and studios have professional design contracts and have to be accepted by a client before they can do any work. Finally, don’t expect that a graphic, illustration, website or logo can be created in one day (or week) unless you are willing to pay a hefty fee.

Another main point to consider when hiring a designer is that most design firms won’t accept the request to do work or develop a design but only be paid if the client “likes it” or “accepts the design”. That scenario is considered speculation. Most design firms are strong NO!SPEC supporters. I’ll save the working on speculation post for another time, but you can read more about what it is at NO!SPEC.

If you’re not familiar with working with professional web or graphic designers, these are the typical steps that are taken by most design firms before you get to the actual design phase of a project.

1. You submit a request for quote from a design studio.
2. The designer responds with a proposal, outline of the project as well as a quoted price.
3. You either accept or don’t accept. Don’t leave the designer hanging; let them know even if you choose not to accept their quote.  Designers have schedules to keep and you’re not going to hurt anyone’s feelings for declining their proposal.
4. Feel free to negotiate the pricing (as long as you’ve read that designer’s terms about pricing).
5. When you accept a proposal, expect to be given a contract to sign. Read it thoroughly and ask questions.
6. Know exactly what you want when getting to this step, your designer can’t read your mind. Asking them to create hundreds of drafts in hopes that you might know what you want when you see it is very unrealistic.
7. Your designer will provide you with a brief about the steps they will take in completing your design project.
8. You must work with the designer by providing clear direction and decisions for your business website, illustration or graphics project to achieve optimum results.

You can also read a more in depth article from the AIGA to help you with your next design project – A Client’s Guide to Design: How to Get the Most out of the Process. This will help you understand the standard practices that most design firms (like Sweet Boutique Design) follow. You will learn about getting the most out of the process, finding the right designer, the design brief, budgeting and managing the process, AIGA standards of professional practice and more. This is a very informative article for anyone who is searching for a web designer, is currently a web designer or wants to become one.

Stephanie Fredrickson of Sweet Boutique Design, LLC. is a member of the AIGA – the professional association for design and adheres to their standards and practices for professional design and has been in business since 2007.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.

A scummy feed scraper stole my entire blog feed and has posted all of my images and feed on their site without my permission. It’s one thing to link to someone’s blog post because you think it’s cool or you want to show your visitors something they could really use. But, come on, my entire blog was on their site. I know I have some cool stuff on here, but really, my entire blog? That’s ridiculous!

This is the offending party – http://www.web2designer.org. I’m not giving them an actual link because I don’t think they deserve it.

If this has happened to you, check this site out -http://www.jtpratt.com/how-to-keep-feed-scrapers-spammers-and-splogs-from-stealing-your-content. I found it in a Google search. There’s tons of good information on what to do if someone steals your content and posts from your blog. The quickest thing you can do is block the offending IP address (if you know it). This article also gives a nifty tool to find out a sites IP address – http://www.zoneedit.com/lookup.html.

I’m in the class of people I guess that still get amazed when someone steals something from my site. I don’t understand why people do it. But, hopefully, this post will help someone else who’s had their blog posts scraped and posted on some site. By the way, this is how you correctly link to a blog post on another person’s website.

©2010 Sweet Boutique Design - Web and Graphic Design Studio. All Rights Reserved.