Barry’s Blog

OsmonicAir.com is now online. Osmonic Air is a local small business that installs HEPA Air Filtration and Central Air Vacuum systems. Although HEPA filtration systems have often been used for hospitals, manufacturing and the Aerospace industry, they are being installed in homes more frequently now due to the growing concern of Indoor Air Pollution, otherwise known as IAP. IAP can contribute to many health issues, such as asthma, and other respiratory diseases. IAPs range in size and shape. Human hair, dust, dust mites, pollen, mold, and tabacco smoke are just a few types of IAPs.

The HEPA filtration systems Osmonic Air installs in your house are built to the same standards as those used for industries and businesses. True HEPA filters can remove as much as 97% of IAPs as small as 0.3 microns. These filtration systems are installed so that they trap the AIPs which flow through your homes air conditioning and heating system. This method allows the filters to keep the IAPs from recirculating through your house.

In addition to HEPA filters, the use of a Central Vacuum system can also aid in reducing IAPs. Particles trapped in carpeting or resting of floors can become airborne when walked over or picked up by air currents. Vacuuming frequently can reduce the amount of IAPs on your floors and carpets. The problem with most common portable vacuums is that their canisters are not airtight and might release the IAPs back into your home. Central vacuum systems are a better solution, since the debris is carried out of the house through a sealed system and deposited into a canister outside of homes air system, usually in the garage.

For more information about how Osmonic Air can help you protect your home and family from Indoor Air Pollution, visit their site, www.osmonicair.com or call 704-200-4001 to schedule a In-Home consultation and  Free Indoor Air Pollution test.

Everyone today knows that mobile phones have taken opened a new way to communicate with the world. With all of the new touch screen phones available today it is a wonder that anyone can decide which to buy. I had resisted the cellular siren call until my boss decided it was time to get on the bandwagon and start designing for mobile. Being a Mac guy there was only one way to go.
I had tried to dismiss those iPhone commercials for over two years. I’ve been a Mac guy ever since I bought my first Apple Mac Classic back in ‘87. I would have bought the phone sooner but It didn’t have 3G or video. Plus, I had just bought a new Samsung and AT&T would have killed me in fees to upgrade. Then last month the stars aligned in the cosmos just at the time the boss gave me a sign. So with (almost) little hesitation I got online and ordered my new iPhone.
The last month has been a lot of fun. I’m still getting use to the keypad though. Typing this is a little slow in comparison to using a full size keyboard. Hitting the right key does take some practice, but I’m getting better at it. I’ve tried the single finger hunt and peck method but find the double thumb groove a little faster, when I don’t hit two keys that is.
I’ve also had a lot of fun downloading the free apps like this WordPress app I’m using right now. I doubt that I’ll do much mobile blogging for the WP blog though. Maybe a Twitter or two. Too much of this and I’m going to get thumb cramps. Speaking of which, I think i’ve had enough of this. I’m going back to my iMac before the text-Itis sets in.

SportsmansDaily.com static version

I’m a little late in getting this posted but, a couple months ago I was asked to convert the html version of The Sportsman’s Daily over to a Wordpress templated site. The site was already using Wordpress for it’s blog, but the client’s wanted to re-design the blog to resemble the main site, thereby carrying over the design and enabling them to maintain and update the content themselves.

My first thought was, “What about all the work I already did on the site?” I had spent months creating the original design and another six months maintaining it for the client. Then I realized that converting the site again would give me another challenge to overcome and more skills to add to my arsenal.

Objective #1 was to take the ’static’ html design and adapt it to the ‘dynamic’ design employed in Wordpress websites. Luckily Wordpress has extensive documentation as well as a very active community forum. Sure, there were some hits and misses along the way, but in short time I was able to figure out what needed to be done. Some of the bigger hurdles was figuring out how to edit some of the php code to do what I wanted to do. Why a hurdle?? Because at that point I knew nothing about php. I’m still not a php guru but after completing this project I felt pretty good about getting around the basic php code.

Some of the major goals in the design was to take the header and the two navigation bars and bring them into the template. This actually proved easier than I thought. I just had to find the correct php pages and place the html code into the appropriate places. Of course I had to edit some of the original Wordpress template html and css code to make sure that everything worked correctly. Integrating my css into the template css proved tricky, but I eventually got it going.

Objective #2 was to redesign the left content column. The static site had employed a area inside a iframe to display the four most recent stories. This was a real PITA to maintain, since it actually rotated five individual pages inside the iframe. Since the client’s would not have the photo editing tools to resize pictures, or the ability to edit outside of wordpress, an alternative was needed. The basic Wordpress template already lists posts in chronological order, but the client wanted to have a section above the posts to display a the most recent story in the “Breaking Sports” category. They also wanted a section below that to highlight some feature posts. I tried using some pre-existing templates, like the Magazine template, but wasn’t getting the results we wanted. We finally compromized by not including the features.

Since the redesigned site went live, The Sportsman’s Daily’s numbers have started to rise again. I was then asked to create a “After Dark” template. This proved to be a lot easier as it only needed the header edited and some of the side panel.

Mission accomplished! The client’s are happy that they are now able to update the site themselves. In the process I got the opportunity to learn some PHP and how to create a Wordpress template. Of course, now that I’ve learned a little PHP I find myself wanting to learn more. Ah, technology! “Learn or Become Obsolete” has become my mantra.

Last week I was contacted by Robert Muse, owner and operator of Muse Hauling and Grading here in Denver, North Carolina. Robert contacted me because, like a lot of local small business owners, he is currently experiencing a downturn in business due to the economy. And, like many other business owners big and small, he needs to be careful with how he spends his money. He has tried newspaper advertising and the yellow pages, with very little effect.

A lot of my website design business is through word of mouth. That is how Robert found me. After a brief consultation we formed a plan to create a small website to target his primary business services: Clearing and Grading, Hauling, Demolition, Retaining Walls, and Concrete & Brick work. Richard pointed out a couple of sites he had seen for me to reference and I went to work.

The design process went relatively quickly and in a few short days I had a comp for Richard to see. Except for a couple of small item he was please with the design. A few days later I had the site cut up and the html pages and CSS files ready to go. All in all the site was up in less than a week.

Of course, getting the site posted to the web is just a small part in the battle against the search engines. I followed all of the guidlines posted by Google and the SEO “experts”, including descriptive page titles, metatag description and keywords and the robots.txt file. I also submitted a xml formatted sitemap to Google. Then I submitted the site to MSN and Yahoo as well as the DMOZ.org directory. Now the wait begins to see how long it takes to get indexed into the search engines.

Since my last post I’ve learned a couple more things about SEO strategies. After watching a online webinar I realized that I had already been following a majority of the points presented. Such as graphically designing a site to focus on priority items. Using larger text for more important things. Using unordered lists (bulleted) for navigation and high level lists. It was no shock to me that perhaps the most important thing is a descriptive title for your page. It doesn’t make sense to title your page Welcome if your selling shoes or boats now, does it?

Some of the things I didn’t know, or may not have realized were important, included using broader words in keyword phrases. For instance, use a plural of a word and Google will automatically associate it with a non-plural word search. Don’t over repeat keywords in your text, using only 1-2 keywords per page. And when it comes to inbound links, quality over quantity will win out every time.

Search engine optimization is a big hurdle in getting your site on the first page. It is a ongoing process that is often confusing and sometimes aggravating. Following the guidelines helps ensure  that your site will have a fighting chance of being placed higher in the search engines.

There is a big push right now by some companies to get website owners to invest in Search Engine Optimization for their sites. The truth is that if you’re site is not optimized correctly, the chances of someone finding you on one of the search engines is slim to none. Type in any word or phrase and see how many returns you get. Chances are, if your not typing in the right phrase, you’ll get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of returns.

This was the challenge posed to me by Chris Freeman. Chris is the owner of a small local business, Iron Man Detailing. He is trying to grow and asked me to make a website for him so that he could have an online presence. We decided to create a single page and optimize it so that people in the area would be able to locate him online. Based on his ideas, I wrote a couple paragraphs peppered with the keywords we agreed on. I also titled his page to target his services and the surrounding towns he would offer his services in.

Now, less than two weeks after posting his site online, IronManLKN.com is coming up on the first page. Since Chris offers Marine and Residential Detailing, and Gelcoat and Fiberglass Repair in and around Lake Norman and Lake Wylie, I was fairly certain that these phrases and keywords would have good results. I did not however expect to have such great results in only two weeks.

If someone tells you they can guarantee to get you on the first page, or even anywhere near the top of the first page on a search engine, they’re lying. Good SEO results are not always so easy, especially when the search engines are constantly changing their algorythms to keep the cheaters at bay. Most often, depending on your site, services, location, etc., it could takes months to even get anywhere near the first page. I’ve put a lot of time, research and practice into learning about SEO practices. And I am happy to say my last few sites have certainly benefited from it.

If you are a sports junky you might like to visit the newly redesigned and recently posted SportsmansDaily.com. Sportsman’s Daily is a satirical look at todays sports written as news articles. The site is the brainchild of my good friend Tom Alexander and Charles Epstein. SportsmansDaily.com covers all topics on all of the sports, including baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, horse racing, boxing / martial arts, college sports, and more.

The first edition of SportsmansDaily.com launched about two years ago and quickly began seeing a large volume of visitors. However, earlier this year just before the superbowl the website was a huge swell of visitors after they published an article entitled Gisele Bundchen: “If the Pats Lose I’ll Run Naked Though Mid-Town Manhattan”. Within hours the site was overrun, nearly closing down the server. Although daily visitors don’t always spike with the same volume the site still enjoys a pretty impressive number of visitors.

So when Tom and Charles approached me to redesign the site I was stoked. Although I have designed a number of sites, this site would be getting noticed on a much larger basis than others.

The plan was to keep the site a static html site that Charles and Tom could maintain themselves with the least amount of hassle. The site had to also include a blog, a forum and a chat room application so that the Sportman’s Daily community could contribute and interact. We began the preliminary design in late June ‘08 and quickly came to a design template that would allow the visitor to quickly find the latest storys as well as archived version.

The newly revised SportsmansDaily.com was officially launched in early August with a brand new group of bizarre and though provoking sports storys. The guys are also regularly blogging about whatever comes across their mind along. Soon the chat room application will go on line, and in the coming months the second season of The Sportsman’s Daily Radio show will begin posting brand new spots.

Through the years I have had the displeasure to do work for client who, how can I say this, were not very honest. Like many other artists, I was often asked to do ’spec’ work. It is a pretty common request, especially when you are just starting to get your business up and running. At some point though you simply have to put a stop to it because, after all, the reason to have a business is to make money. Sure, there are always occasions, say for charity or a friend or a very special client, where a job might be done for free. But now these situations are the rarity rather than the norm. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my job description with Omni Advertising, I am in charge of writing a blog for their main website, OmniAutomotiveAdvertising.com. It was my suggestion that we start the blog as a strategy to increase our presence on the internet, ramp up our google rankings and develop more incoming and outgoing links to the sites.

According to many of the guidelines, a blog is an integral tool to higher google rankings. Sites such as WebSiteGrader.com advise that the inclusion of a blog will increase your overall score. Prior to starting the Omni blog site, the main website had a very low score, somewhere around 20/100. After adding the blog, and following the other guidelines, the score rose to 53/100! Now, six months later, the site scores 72/100!

Of course, a blog is only a tool. A means to a end, the end being more visitors to your site. While many pages on a website are very rarely update, a blog can easily updated on a regular basis. If your blog is interesting and attracts attention you’ll see a increase in your sites traffic.

Keeping the blog up to date is the challenge. As you can tell from this blog, my last entry was in April. Finding something new to write about can be difficult if you’re not a prolific writer. Writing something that people will find interesting can also be a challenge. Since I write the Omni blog, I spend a lot of time finding suitable topics for that site and tend to neglect this blog.

So, if you want more visitors and higher search rankings, write a blog! It’s worth it.

Last night I attended the Adobe Charlotte Users Group meeting. Guest speaker, Christian N. Abad of Accessible Computing, Inc., gave an animated presentation on the topic of web site accessibility. Accessibility, in this case, refers to how accessible your website is to people with various handicaps or disabilities who use alternative methods to read the content on websites.

I found the timing of this meeting to be right on as I have been researching accessibility over the past month for some of my own projects. In my research I discovered that most ’sighted’ people, like myself, don’t often think about this subject. We take in multiple sources of information in a single glance.

But not everyone can rely on their eyes for information. This is certainly true of the blind, who often rely on screen readers to surf the net. These machines do exactly what you think. They read the web page, one word at a time. And they do it in a certain order. If a page is not designed for accessibility, finding the information you want could be frustrating to say the least.

Blindness is not the only disability targeted by accessibility. Accessibility addresses issues dealt with by people who are colorblind, or have trouble distinguishing contrasting colors, people with limited use of their hands, or suffer deafness or dyslexia, people with cognitive or neurological disabilities, or even age related disabilities.

In response to these issues, the WW3 came up with a list of accessibility guidelines. In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act, Section 508, to require Federal agencies to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities. Simply said, any site receiving money from the federal government are now required to follow the Section 508 guidelines.

So why should your website follow these guidelines. Besides the fact that this would make your site accessible to handicapped people, these guidelines also make your site easier to navigate for everyone. If someone can find what they are looking for right away the odds are that they will continue to use your website and will use your services. The guidelines also help you when it comes to search engine optimization, which will help people find your site to begin with.

Throughout the meeting I found myself nodding in agreement to many of the guidlines Christian mentioned. Many of them seem to be based on common sense, like having navigation links at the top of a page. I was pleased to realize that I already implement many of these guidelines in my design.