Every year on my daughter’s birthday we plant a tree in our backyard. It is a great and easy way to give our children a connection with nature and to teach them they can make the world a better place to live.

Planting a tree is a great way to celebrate any occasion: a birthday, an anniversary (5th anniversary is wood), valentines, graduation, Christmas (try a living tree, in a pot), Earth Day or just for fun! Whatever the occasion, planting a tree is always a good and rewarding choice! (Without to mention that it also increases your property value)

The loss of millions of acres of forest every year and with the extinction of thousands of plants and animals makes us think that we have to take the steps ourselves to make the difference and this is a very easy way of giving something back to our planet.

Planting a tree is a wonderful family and friends activity. So far, we have 8 beautiful trees and I make sure to take time to sit back and enjoy the delicious and fresh juicy fruits.

Plant a tree, and reap the rewards year after year!

Happy planting!!!

…Victoria…

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” -Martin Luther King

I have spent the last months learning and researching about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I have attended some seminars, participated in forums, watched tons of videos and read books, articles and blogs about this interesting topic.

This handbook is a Pacific Designers effort to help our customers learn the basics of SEO and develop a better site interaction with users and search engines. Consider this handbook as a quick reference to enhance the chances that users will find your information through natural/organic search results.

 Small changes and modifications will improve your ranking, generate traffic and can have a noticeable impact on your performance.

We hope this handbook will give you some ideas on how to improve your web site. Please feel free to drop me a line after reading this guide. Your feedback and comments are truly appreciated.

By the way, did you already submit your web site to BING?

… Victoria …

A great way to thank those who have supported your business over the last twelve months and strengthen business relationships is sending a personalized holiday e-card.

Use a holiday e-card to create a positive impression of your company that will last long into next year.

During this challenging economic times a holiday e-card is considerably less expensive and a great time-saver since it is easier to create, quicker to deliver and have a better chance of being opened than any direct mail during these busy days. Besides that, it is also better for the environment.

Here are some ideas you can include in your holiday e-card.

• Make sure you spend time making your holiday e-card simple and memorable.
• Give your holiday e-card an extra special or individual touch. Include a photo of you and your staff. Include your company logo, signature and a personal message on a unique design.
• Recipients are more likely to read an email message when the email is personalized, so address your recipients using their names whenever possible.
• You can say thank you with a gift: an exclusive coupon or discount, share a favorite holiday food or drink recipe, give some advice and tips, maybe a quote that will enrich the soul, something unique … something inspiring.
• It’s better to send earlier rather than later. The busiest time for online activity is December 5th through 15th. Make sure your holiday e-card takes into consideration these dates.
• Also consider the people that are taking more half days off. So, send the holiday e-card, early in the morning. It could be the most effective time to deliver your message.
• Be aware of your clients’ religious beliefs. Use more neutral and inclusive terms such as “holiday season” and “happy holidays”.
• When designing your holiday e-card, consider your audience, as well as the technical limitations of email.
• If you send a holiday e-card, consider using email campaign software; it can provide a “mobile-friendly” link version (text only) and track email open rates. There are plenty of services available on the market.

Your clients will appreciate your thanks and your efforts can solidify existing relationships. December is around the corner. Are you ready?

…Victoria…

On June 2nd, Adobe launched Acrobat.com which is available as a free beta.

These days it is very common to work with people in different places. Acrobat.com  delivers a new way for people to work together online increasing communication, productivity and collaboration within a Web browser. It is also great for people on the road since files can be accessed from anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Acrobat.com is a set of online services: file sharing, storage, PDF converter, online word processor, and Web conferencing (screen sharing, video conferencing, chatting, audio choices and my favorite: your own personal online meeting room with a permanent and easy to remember URL).

Personally, I think the UI design is great, it is very easy to use and allows me to work faster and more effectively with other people online.

It is still in the Beta stage and I’m sure they have much more to offer and improve down the road (as offline capabilities).

Hopefully it is available in other languages soon…me entienden?

It is definitely worth it to give it a try…

…Victoria…

Disabled web users of all ages are becoming increasingly savvy and adept at
using the Internet. It is a moral responsibility to make an effort to ensure
the web is accessible to everyone and it does not discriminate against disabled
visitors.

Accessibility is simply web design that allows everyone to access your website.

Below are listed some simple solutions that help to improve your Web site:

1. Images

   Use ALT Tags to describe images to enable your site to be read by visitors with visual and hearing impairments.

   If an image contains relevant information, use the LONGDESC attribute to thoroughly describe the image. Make sure to describe items that you are selling as if there were no images at all.
   If your navigation uses graphic menus, always provide an alternate navigation using basic text links.
   Try turning off graphics in your Web browser and look at your pages — are they still intelligible and navigable? 

2. Color
   Use colors with high contrast between the text and the background.

   Use plain colors backgrounds. Some users have trouble distinguishing text and images from the background.

   The contrast of black text on white backgrounds is perfect for printing purposes (subtractive color system) but on the screen (additive color system) the black on white combination can be overly luminous and too harsh on the eyes to allow extended reading on screen. The emergence of Web 2.0 has seen the dark gray text as a new standard in graphic design.

   White space can guide the eye and help users understand the grouping of information.

3. Text
   Do not use absolute font sizes. To ensure scalability, use relative units such as the em unit to control the size. Current browsers offer an option to zoom in the fonts but it only happens if we provide relative specification for font sizes.

   Text should be left-justified. Left-justified text is the most legible option for Web pages. The uneven spacing between words in justified text can cause “rivers of white” space to run down the page making reading difficult.

   Increased line height. Some users find that an increase in the space between lines of text in a paragraph can aid readability.

   AVOID THE USE OF ALL CAPS FOR TEXT SINCE IT IS DIFICULT FOR THE EYE TO RECONIZE THE SHAPE OF WORDS.

4. Hypertext links
   Use meaningful link text that makes sense when read out of context.

   For example, instead of using “click here” use “Information about Content Management System”.

   Leaving white space between links on a Web page helps people with and without motor skill challenges to hit targets accurately.

   The logo should be clickable and linked to the home page. Naming that link is very important. The logo’s ALT text should say something like “Link to homepage.”

   Use Skip Links. When using a Screen Reader the navigation and menus on the page can be skipped over if the page is designed with skip links. These allow the user to skip over the list of links and navigation on every page before reaching the interesting content of a page.

   Underline all links. Underlines are especially important for users with low vision. When a page is zoomed in, it is difficult to discern some of the more subtle link indicators, like bold or blue text. Underlines are easier to see when the screen is magnified. (Do not underline any text that cannot be clicked)

5. Logical page organization
   Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. Screen readers allow the user to jump from header to header or from list to list, giving them as quickly as possible an overview of the entire document. If your website does not have any headers, this function can not be used.

   Example:

   The Screen Readers software reads <H1> as a most important header, and <H2> as a sub header.

   Organization should be as consistent as possible so people don’t have to spend time re-learning the navigation on each page.

   Keep the navigation possibilities in the same area. This is particularly important for people with low vision using screen magnifiers.

6. Clean and pure HTML code
   All professionally designed Web sites should meet at least the minimum standards for accessibility defined by the W3C guidelines (World Wide Web Consortium).

   The W3C provide an automatic validation
   service that allows you to check your code for errors.

7. Use CSS for layout and formatting
   Cascading style sheets offer significant benefits for accessibility.

   When site text is formatted with CSS, users can override styles to format text to meet their needs. This allows users with limited vision or colorblindness to change the size or color of text.

One in five Americans has some disability. Do you really want to ignore them?

…Victoria…

Find more>>

The U.S. Government provides a comprehensive listing of Section 508 information regarding general, technical, functional, and informational standards.

For more information on the requirements in different countries see the W3C page Policies Relating to Web Accessibility.

Making
the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities by Jakob Nielsen, “the
guru of Web page usability”

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news feeds make it easy for you to get news and content updates from your favorite websites, all in one place. When you subscribe to a feed, new articles and updates are automatically sent to a web service or software known as a feed reader or aggregator. Read about how RSS feeds work…

If you run a blog and use a blogging tool, probably the tool generates an RSS feed for you… so, you don’t need to worry about how to write RSS documents.

RSS feed is an XML based file. There are different variations of the RSS format. I recommend RSS 2.0 since it is the most popular and has a lot of features. If you understand how HTML works, you can learn how to build your own RSS 2.0 feed easily just make sure you follow the XML 1.0 specifications published by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Check the functionality of this file at:
http://pacificdesigners.com/rss/rss.xml

Step 1: XML Declaration
Since RSS 2.0 must validate as XML, the first line in your RSS feed must be the XML declaration.

The first line specifies the document as XML and the document encoding that will be used.
The second line states you are using RSS and which version of RSS you are using. I recommend you copy this into your file as it is.

Step 2: Channel and Feed information:

We open the channel tag, which contains information and content about the feed.
Title, Description and Link are required channel elements.
Title: The name of the channel.
Description: Sentence describing the channel.
Link: URL to the HTML website corresponding to the channel.

We have to insert a atom:link to the feed in the channel section. According to the RSS Advisory Board’s Best Practices Profile, identifying a feed’s URL within the feed makes it more portable, self-contained, and easier to cache.

There are some optional elements used in this file as:
language: The language the channel is written in. This element allows aggregators to group same language sites on a single page.
docs:  URL that points to the documentation for the format used in the RSS file.
image: Image that can be displayed with the channel (GIF, JPG or PNG)
ttl: Time to live. It’s a number of minutes that indicates how long a channel can be cached before refreshing from the source.

Step 3: RSS Items

Next we enumerate over each RSS item. A channel may contain any number of <item>. All elements of an item are optional, but at least one of title or description must be present.

Some optional elements used in this file are:
guid: Guid stands for globally unique identifier. It’s a string that uniquely identifies the item.
pubDate: Its value is a date, indicating when the item was published.

Step 4: Close Channel and RSS tags.

Finally, validate your feed at: FeedValidator.org

 This is a valid RSS feed

To make your RSS feed look pretty, you can add a stylesheet to the feed.

There are two types of stylesheets you could add. first, using XML and the second one using CSS.

I will explain about it in a next blog….

 …Victoria…

Now, you have your blog running with your smiling picture on it … now what? How can you let people know about your blog in the first place? Who is going to read your next blog besides your wonderful friends and family? 

Ok, unless you have a blog that is intended to share only with family members and close friends you have to start to promote and advertise your blog. Here are some tips:

1. Content
Write quality content that people want to read. Use Attractive Titles and use keywords on them. Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines and newsfeeds (RSS). Think about the words and phrases someone would use to find your information and use them more than once as you write. Use links to the sources or link yourself to previous articles you have written that way the content look more informative.

Avoid large blocks of text break up your text, using bullets, numbered lists, quotes, paragraph breaks and images.

 2. Blog Frequency
For most weblogs, daily updates are probably best, but weekly or even monthly updates might work as well, depending on your topic. Don’t let months go by without new content. Be sure to keep your blog updated.

The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their spiders to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging. Feed the spiders!

3. Submit your site to the search engine directories
Get your blog listed in a directory like dmoz (this is the most important directory), LookSmart and Yahoo. Google gives importance to the websites that are listed in dmoz  and Yahoo directories. If you manage to get your site listed on these directories, soon it will be listed on Google and hundreds of other directories automatically.

Use a description that captures your niche market and topic — the more specific, the better in helping you stand out.

4. Technorati
Technorati is the biggest blog search engine and one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. People find your blogs easily when people search by technorati tags. Technorati will rank your blog based on the number of links from other websites. The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things.
Wordpress automatically communicates with Technorati, and a few other sites.

5. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo
Submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo.

6. Add Meta Tags
Meta Tags (The word meta means information about ) contain information that describes your site’s purpose, description, and keywords used within your site. The meta tags are stored in the head section of the html document.

By default, WordPress doesn’t included them, but you can manually include them in the header.php template file.

7. Alt tags
Use alt tags for your images, and be sure that they match what the image shows - this helps Google image search and other image search engines.

8. Exchange Links
Exchange links with your friends and other bloggers. Link to other people blogs using your blogroll and ask them politely to do the same for you. Links (especially from quality sites) helps you being placed better in search engines results.

9. Comments
Leaving relevant comments on other’s people’s blogs will bring curious readers of those comments to your site. This is a common tactic used by bloggers to get a few readers here and there for their blog.

Post a comment with a link. (do NOT just post the link, which is considered spamming for a lot of bloggers). Comment what you like or don’t like about it, just a few sentences. Then you mention that you wrote a similar post, and supply the URL for those who want to check it out.

10. Forums
Other methods to increase yours site’s link popularity is to register and be active on a Forum that allow you to provide signatures.

11.  Permalinks - permanent link

Permalinks are the permanent links (url) that points to a specific blog entry.

Permalinks remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems, including Wordpress, Movable Type, LiveJournal and RapidWeaver support such links.

You can beautify your urls with something more meaningable and readable.

12.  Sign your email -Add your blog’s url as part of your signature in your email.

13. Tip - Make your posts conversational, try to involve the reader by writing to them. Ask Questions: Asking questions at the end of posts encourages readers to leave comments.

So - what do you think? Do you know more tips to increased traffic to your blog?

I had to ask!

…Victoria…
www.pacificdesigners.com

RSS = Really Simple Syndication = Rich Site Summary

Not too long ago you would have to check for any updates in a blog or a favorite site.

Here is the old way:

1. Bookmark a website to your browser’s Favorites list.
2. Days later (maybe weeks or months) you check the recent updates of your favorite website or blog.

…NOW…

If a blog or a favorite site is updated it comes to you and it is displayed in one place.

Here is the new way:

1. Add the website’s feed to your feed reader. (Also called an RSS reader, feed reader, aggregator, newsreaders or news aggregator.)
2. This reader monitors your chosen feeds for updates. If an update is detected, the reader shows you what was added or changed in your favorite site.

But how do you do it?

It is very simple.  

First, you need to sign up for a reader.   Here are a few:

www.google.com/reader
www.bloglines.com
www.feedreader.com

Second, you need to set up a connection between the reader and your favorite sites. It is called subscribing.

Now, go to a site that supports RSS. Look for the icon that indicates a link to a RSS file. There are two ways to subscribe. One is to enter the URL of the RSS feed into your reader. The other is to follow a subscribe link from a web page; Every reader has a different way of doing this… so, you have to follow the instructions. Now, new posts from your favorite site will arrive to your reader.

Why should you make a feed available?
Your viewers will thank you because it allows them to see your site updates rather than visit each of their favorite sites individually. For anyone that reads dozens of pages a reader is a necessity. RSS readers are set up to check periodically for new items in the feeds you are subscibed to, commonly once every hour. In other words, the news comes to you, rather than you having to go to the news. This saves a tremendous amount of time.

 Are you ready to save time?

…Victoria…
www.pacificdesigners.com

Here are some blog best practices for any blogger looking for a practical way to improve the usability of their blog. Many of the principles here will apply to websites, as well.

1. Setting up your blog - Get a good domain name
If you are serious about blogging the best practice is to set up your blog as a part of your company domain.
For example, yourdomain.com/blog.

Having your own blog location under your domain allows you to switch blog software easily without having to change your url.

Hosting your own blog gives your site a more professional look and has some search engine marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) advantages.

Also, register your domain name for a lengthy period. A recent Google patent indicates they now look at the length of your domain’s registration to rank it. Why? because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you are building a solid site.

2. Design
Pay important attention to the design of your blog. There is no accounting for taste but keeping the design simple, clean and easy to navigate will fill everybody’s expectation. Keeping it simple and clean will allow Seach Engine robots to index your site a lot faster and more accurately.

Templates are excellent to start with and you can also modify it to add your own look and feel. Make your theme unique by adding your logo, own graphics and colors. It will help you to stand out from all the other blogs and add credibility.

If you are not making decent money with ads I suggest you to remove all ads you have on your blog. Make sure nothing steals attention from your text.

3. Include an about page and add your photo
Explain to the reader who you are and why you have a blog. Your blog reveals your personal views, so introduce yourself to your readers. You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you’re not trying to hide. People are more likely to deal with somebody that they know more about.
A smiling and friendly picture of a blogger will make people more likely to come to your blog again.

Now, you have your blog running with your smiling picture on it … now what? How can you let people know about your blog in the first place? Who is going to read your next blog besides your wonderful friends and family? (BTW, Thank you guys for your nice comments;-) ) Now, I invite you to read the second part of this blog “Spread your Blog”

…Victoria…
pacificdesigners.com

Welcome to my new blog. I intend to write about the art of making web sites, share my knowledge and experiences in web design with you and maybe just to vent!

Pacific Designers blog
will cover topics such as:
• Optimizing your site to get more traffic
• Web usability
• How to use images to capture your audience
• Should I use a blog instead of a website?
• What makes a website successful
• and much more…

Hope you enjoy it. Personally, I love what I do for a living!

…Victoria…
pacificdesigners.com