Here is a link to a site where you can validate your website’s css.

http://validator.w3.org/

You simply type in the url of the page you want to check and click ‘Check’. This will validate your site’s markup and return a page that will either congratulate you on your excellent coding skills or tell you all the bad things about your css.

Having valid css and html is important for good SEO because…..well, I’m not really sure why but I would think the cleaner your site and the less errors and bugs you have the better.

The cleaner your code is, the easier it is for spiders to search your site. There…I think that’s probably the reason why – I guess. 🙂

Like many people, I started out using Macromedia Fireworks and eventually took the plunge and migrated to Photoshop. Although the switch was difficult at first, I quickly became accustomed to the differences between the two programs and now rely on Photoshop for about 95% of my design now.

I thought I would share some of the links I frequent on a regular basis looking for new tutorials, ideas, trends, etc. Enjoy!

http://www.templatemonster.com (mainly for ideas)

http://www.photoshoplab.com/

http://www.photoshoplab.com/

http://www.cameronmoll.com/

I found a very nice tool today (it’s free by the way) that gives you a GUI interface so you can make subnavs.

So for example, a lot of sites have a main nav element called Products. This tool will help you create a subnav so that when you put your mouse over Products, another menu opens up giving you more options.

http://www.opencube.com/imenus.asp

The tool is free and does not use Flash or Javascript so everything is SEO friendly.

I spoke with a guy at church today who said he got a website done but it has never gone live because he just hasn’t gotten around to writing the copy. In fact, he said it’s been about a year and a half since the site’s been done!

I wanted to post a question: what should be an acceptable deadline to receive copy for a website? 2 weeks, 1 month, etc. What is the norm in the industry?

I’ve always found that this is the biggest slow down to site development – waiting on copy from the client.

Anyone else have this issue? How did you resolve it? Is there an industry standard for dealing with this?

As I peruse the online plethora of “how-to’s” on the web about how to rank your website higher on search engines, I keep running into the ‘keyword density’ enigma.

No one seems to know what the magic percentage or number is as far as how many times to use a certain keyword/keyphrase on a webpage.

You don’t want to repeat them too much or you might be considered spamming the search engines; but then you want to make sure you use them enough or you don’t get your point across. It’s a mystery. Google certainly won’t give any hints about it, so how do we know what’s acceptable and what’s not? Should I repeat the same keyword 5 times? 10 times?

I set up a blog for my company the other day (http://www.avalive.com/blog/blog.html) and was showing it to a friend. He asked me if I was pinging Technorati when I made updates. I was like, ‘Techno -who?’.

He said you can set it up so that whenever you made changes to your blog, you notify other popular blogs of your changes. Fortunately, Google’s Blogger does that automatically for you.

Technorati is very popular right now so you want to make sure you ping them.

I did some research and found this site the other day:

http://www.pingoat.com/

This service lets you ping multiple blogs at once. It’s free, easy and they also have some other great tools like a webpage keyword analysis tool, a spider simulator tool and email anti-spam generators.

1. Download Simpleviewer – http://www.simpleviewer.net/simpleviewer/
2. Download Picasa2 – http://picasa.google.com/download/index.html
3. Create a folder on your desktop to hold the gallery.
4. Open Picasa
5. Create a new web album, select the folder that contains your pics, select the Simpleviewer template, select the destination as the folder on your desktop and voila – you’re done.

One of my clients, Ryan Curtis uses this method on his website:

http://www.curtis-photo.com/

Just click on one of his gallery links to see an example.

Another project for a non-profit organization is in the works.

Last May a couple of buddies and I went to Jaco, Costa Rica for a surf trip and stayed with the local Christian Surfers in Jaco.

Upon returning from the trip, Daniel Looman, the local chapter director, asked me to help redesign their new site.

The design phase is complete and now we are busy integrating all the content and pics into the site pages.

This site will probably be done before 2007 so check back soon for the release date.

We have been busy redesigning the local Surfrider chapter’s website that is set to be completed in early 2007.

Check back around January to get a final release date.

You can view their current site at:

http://www.surfrider.org/capefear/

Last year I was doing some computer work on the side for a gentlemen named William Casey here in Wilmington NC.

He is part of a non-profit organization called Propapa which sends different types of teams to Honduras to minister to the people who need help. The types of teams they send there are:
dental teams, eyecare teams, construction teams and medical teams.

Casey asked me if I would help out with the site which in the end will help the people of Honduras by creating an informative sight that is easy to use and bursting with different opportunities for people to help, volunteer and donate.

http://www.propapa.org/