Tag: design

Things to Consider When you Hire Someone to Design Your Website

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Make sure that you have a place to store your material that composes your website. Make sure you have as much space as you possibly can, like powweb, they have unlimited storage at a very good price. Very good. So far I have registered for three different companies websites at powweb and all three were under $100 for two years.

Okay we all know that web-design, Some people can do it, some people can not do it. (wait, I am not selling you web design, simply because I am sick of it) I know it’s not actually an art . but you really have to think of it like you think of art. Try and not think of it as construction. You can not just lay out blueprints and say “hey this is how it goes, this is what i want and this is exactly what you will give me”. Ever try that crap with a guy that just draws cartoons or caricatures ? You can’t go and grab someone who draws realistic drawings with perfect angles shading lighting and life like appeal, to just draw you on a rocket ship with a rodeo clown shirt on. It’s just not his thing, and well, he has his certain fields he has focused on really well. It is best you let him utilize his abilities to his best interest.

You are not a web designer. So having a lay out or a design  that you want, well you are going to have to do it yourself. If you do not lay out your website yourself, be certain that what he will make for you, will not be to your liking on the first round. It’s just a fact.

A person that knows about web design is doing everything with full optimization in mind. This person has this thing laid out with full SEO integrated in their design. The more you toss ideas at them and the more you incorporate a third party web designer in this project, the more you throw this guy out of his field of operation. You will also start to make a complete professional web-designer look like a total amateur. Let him finish his project and you will see what he gave you will have tons of great cooperative segments of the site’s design.
Have an open mind, be prepared for creative differences and be prepared for someone more knowledgeable in this field to tell you that what you want will not work. Or be prepared for someone to just build you exactly what you want and leave to to fight the internet on your own.

1. If you have a specific idea that you want done and must have, then be clear about what you want from the start. Draw it on paper, show each page individually and fill in the exact text you want or need that explains that page. He can not read your mind. He is not in your business, or you would have more competition. Be prepared for the designer to re-word your text to handshake his SEO portion of the design.

2. Give all logos you need for the design.

3. Be ready for some of your ideas to get scratched. They may be obsolete or to complex for the average user to enjoy. Or they just may screw up the Search Engine Optimization portion of your design. Some of your idea may be unrealistic.

4. Be certain that your site’s topics cover what means the most interest in your company. If you sell airplane door hinges, don’t make your company website talk about what your company started as, what it is becoming and what it is now. Make your website about airplane door hinges. It would take a pretty submissive web-designer to not tell you that you are goofing  by using the wrong content.

Don’t ask the designer of your website to copy another website. Do not go to the nearest search engine and steal pictures off of the internet and ask your web designer to design your website around them. Do not under estimate the power of proper Search Engine optimization. Do not expect SEO work to happen over night. It takes most search engines two weeks to set your site in rank order. Heck it actually takes that long just for them to get around to noticing you are there. Do not look at a crowded Navigation bar/ menu and request more in there without a bit of a remodeling.

You can have the site you want. Just have your wants and needs laid out already. save a copy for yourself and give a copy to the web guy. If you already have a web guy then by all means, let him do the work. just be ready to hire someone else for SEO and make sure your web guy is ready to comply with the SEO person. It’s hard for one web guy to go back behind another web designer and figure out what they changed and how to make it work with the full plan. Improper communication ends in crazy results.

Here is an image I found on Facebook that seemed to fit perfect.

facts about website outsourcing

facts about website outsourcing

Free Useful WordPress Themes

Posted onAuthorTips Of Tech1 Comment

The guys at Zenverse have some really useful powerful wordpress themes. The themes they provide have advertisement tools out the wazoo (lol I said wazoo). Many free themes with tons of  plugin options already built in. They have some for sale, I never made it that far. I found some free ones that seem to have changed my whole website efforts. On that note I have to take time to tell you to look for their donate button, Their efforts are worth a simple donation, and or a thank you.

WordPress themes

I am in the process of editing two that I got from theme. Not much but enough to make it closer to the appearance I need. You know, colors shades and adding a little bit of flash

An SEO Person to Learn From

Posted onAuthorTips Of Tech1 Comment

I thought I knew everything about search engine optimization, until I met Alicia Crowder. This lady schooled me in a flash.

Web search engine marketing that drives customers to your business website is delivered by the SEO Web Content Writing Solution. In the marketing and SEO writing business for more than 10 years, the owner of SEO Web Content Writing Solution understands just what it takes to get your business website to generate leads for your company. Call (832) 884-1330 to learn about the many ways that you will benefit from a diversified Internet marketing campaign……….

Kinda made me feel inadequate when I started reading her site for all of the tips she has on how to get seen in google for categories I want to fall under. I have been trying to pick her brain a bit over the last week or so, I mean come on this lady knows her stuff. She seems to be picking back from time to time, but I know I have been all over her sites. Her recent post on her seo tips site seems to nail out exactly what she does.

I follow her on twitter to get fresh updates. but I really try and not let her know of my sites to crawl and critique, it would slaughter my ego lol.

She does offer a service where she will do the  work for you, but she also has tons and tons of free information on her sites. I actually have no products to market so I just use her free advice and tips to get  an idea of what I need to tweak here and there to get my content read.

Running like 6 or seven sites I feel like I am a know it all. but really I do not. but hey, who does ?

I have been using her tips for about a week now and I have seen some real changes. a big hats off to Alicia and her SEO tips.

Fire Alarm Cad Template

Posted onAuthorTruXter12 Comments

fire_alarm_title_block

(Give me a like on a social site or share this with a friend, I don’t have a 2000 pr team, it’s just me here)
I have been working on a template in autodesk for a year or so, trying to eliminate all issues. I have not yet prevented everything that I may encounter, but I have reduced the amount of issues that can come. So no this is not a perfect download. It is how ever as close as I have come this far. Fire Alarm Legend and Title Block is now for sale only. There are tons of websites that help you get the Symbols for you legend and there are many sites that give you fire alarm sprinkler addons for autodesk autocad. There is very little for fire alarm. So it is a rough start.

Most of this is my own work, but much of this is what I have gathered around the internet doing searches In Google and Bing and Yahoo and Ask. There just was not enough out there for me to get the job done. What you see there in Layout view is nothing compared to what is going on  in Model. Everything you see there is through view ports. All of my view ports are built to scale.

The trick is to drop all images into the square above the  title-block  and then scale it so that it prints out to scale. there is a second view port in layout view that opens to that location.

If you are in need of this whole Fire Alarm DWG file, let me know I will set it up for upload and message you when it is ready.

There is a huge original version of this, so what you are seeing in those two pdf files would be the light weight trimmed down most used items version. There is a huge one with everything I can possibly use, that would look like a train wreck though.

******update*****
I have the cad file listed for sale. I will be emailing the DWG DWT file to every person who pays for it.

All prices are marked and made easy.  Major credit cards and paypal are welcome, If you require any other method of payment, use the contact form on that page.
Simply because I would prefer to sell the thing for at a lower price for the basic and limited tools.
There is a full version with full tools and all addons to make it easier to complete your fire alarm
design in cad. Oh and the one I had here on the site, Is about 10 versions old.
The new one has a few Candelas tools in it already and many block features that most people do not even know
exist.
This Template comes with a my personal created method to measure Candelas , Smoke coverage, a battery calculation addon that I created, Blocks for every device to me inserted, and instruction manual with short cut codes for calling the block.
This Fire Alarm Template has everything I use on a daily basis and will shorten your design time, reduce room for error and simplify fire alarm design so much that you can give someone a computer with this template and they will be designing fire alarm systems like a pro, as they read the “HowTo” file.
So Simple, even your boss can use this .DWT file.
If you want a copy just reply with a comment, all messages here are filtered so they will not post till I approve them.
All personal information will not be shown here.
******update*****

**update** This post is 4 years old. There have been many updates to the fire alarm template. It is no longer free. I have listed it for sale. The update to this is located here Fire Alarm Design Made easy

(Here is the 2014 version of the fire alarm template)
and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW
Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.

Need someone to critique Website

Posted onAuthorTruXter

I entered the company website HiTech Into The Sammy Awards.

I need some last minute people to give me ideas on what to tweak to make the site more presentable

and cleaner. just respond here. I don’t care if you make up an email address to respond.  Just drop some ideas on me please.

any ideas will very much be appreciated. I really want this award.

oh you have top see what the site used to look like before I got here December 07.  I have been here almost a year now. you should google this “Houston fire detection”. Not so bad if I do say myself.

Oh btw, the site has been submitted as is, but I am sure I can make tiny tweaks, just no major face lifts. If I don’t get the prize this year, I will be in it for an overhaul for next year. I will eventually win this.

Web Page Creator

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Ok So I was sent to office depot 5 minutes before lunch started. I decided to swing by the burger place and get some lunch before I go in, and just waste an hour and 15 minutes for lunch instead of my regular hour lunch. I went in to Office depot and gathered all the things I needed into a buggy (office supply junk, paper pens toner ink) and walk in circles for a few minutes. While walking in circles and getting followed around by the depot snipers ( not sure they thought I was shop lifting, so i picked up stuff and would misplace it like crazy) I stumbled on the $9 software bin. While rooting around I saw a “buy one get one free” sign. So I decided to dig around and make sure I find something. Well I found a web page design thingy disk. I pretty much knew it would be crap because it’s price and the fact that the makers say nothing about it’s form or style. Like css,html javascript. Nothing just says something about templates.
The product is made by a company named Cosmi, the product name is “WEB PAGE CREATOR”. there is a circle stamp on the front with a symbol that says “#1” and some stuff in tiny freaking print though I can make out the work “productivity” . Well I scanned it with asquared,virscan.org, norton anti vir and found no reason to freak out.
So today I finally install the software. The actual software they are selling is all of about 10 megs of software, the rest, well, the rest is a 2002 version of open office.
The software they created (I think they created or just downloaded from some poor joke’s website) is just a shell script hand full of short cut links to open office items but named differently in the program. Don’t worry, when the open office items open up they do show their names at the top of the program’s window.
Well My True honest opinion, as far as web design goes, you can do everything this software bundle can do, Simply by using netscape navigator 7.2 suite edition. ns 7.2 suite comes with a program called “composer” and well, you can do the whole “what you see is what you get” web design part of using a program just like you can with cosmi’s erm, uh, java sun system’s? open office program.
plus netscape 7.2 s does not come with netzero crapware like this program does..

My call?
Walk past this thing, sure waste of ten bucks.

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