Author Archives: The Artist

Better Blog Design

Posted on 10/12/2011 by The Artist

Blog’s themselves are very simple creations on the surface. They are the digital equivalent of the old paper journals, with one exception – that anyone you wish to read it can, and at their leisure. However, once you get into the details of designing the overall look and feel of a blog’s design it’s very easy to get lost. The base idea we need to always keep in mind, as a website-journal the end user’s needs must not be forgotten. So we find we are required to focus on how the content is shared, both visually and with accessibility in mind. One of … Continue reading →

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CSS Menus: Sliding Door Validation

Posted on 06/03/2009 by The Artist

I love making dynamic menus of all kinds, and trying to find ways to merge various forms and sorts of dynamic menus. What I don’t like is making menus that rely on any code other then CSS. It’s a personal preference of mine as I find that it keeps site speed faster. Now understand, often it doesn’t scrape off a lot of time, but for image-heavy sites every little bit counts. There is a nifty version of the horizontal menu called a “Sliding Doors” menu. In this the background image(s) are set up so that they grow or shrink with … Continue reading →

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SMO (Social Media Optimization)?

Posted on 05/24/2009 by The Artist

What is SMO? Well, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about setting your site up to be a grand winner in the search engine “races”. You work on meta tags, descriptions, word-density in your static pages. and so much more. But is SMO related? In a way yes, but in a very different way. SMO is a term to describe the use of Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, My Space (and to some lesser extent ever YouTube) and more in order to further expanded an individual’s or business’ marketing reach. By using these sites to advertise their products or services, … Continue reading →

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Heigh-ho

Posted on 02/03/2009 by The Artist

I’m working on a friend’s website at the moment, so things have slowed in getting my new design up and running. Rather then let the site site and suffer, I’ve temp-skinned it with a theme that is at the very least goos looking and very functional. Please bear with me as I work. Thank you!

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AdRotate Banner Flexibility!

Posted on 01/25/2009 by The Artist

One of the problems I had with AdRotate was that the widget form doesn’t allow for multiple widgets to show different groups of banners in a sidebar. (At the time of this writing.) At least, not using the WordPress admin panel.  But, after reading through the site I realized you can ad banners everywhere. No really…, everywhere! Thinking about that I realized we can even add them to our headers, or better yet use it to replace the header image entirely! *shock* Now one thing I’ve always wanted to do is to have my “skins” change for the seasons. More … Continue reading →

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