Monkey Valley Resort Website

The new Monkey Valley Resort website development nears its completion!

Monkey Valley Resort Website

The integration of the Booking System at Monkey Valley Resort seems to be more complex than expected; accordingly, I still wait for the integration link to finish off the website and take off the front slider that points out that this is a website built on a WP based Semiomantics XO – the best script out there when it comes to visibility on Google!

Obviously, it’s then a matter of doing regular editing and publishing of good original content to keep the positions in the keyword areas targeted; however, from the results seen so far – be it for the Best Cape Town Conferencing Venue, the Best Cape Town Weddings, Thorfynn’s Restaurant Christmas Lunch or the New Year’s Eve Spectacular or Monkey Valley Resort – well, as the results clearly have shown, the initial investment in the right website has paid off manyfold! And this before its completion!

Semiomantics Website or Google Ads

Either you ensure your presence on Google top rankings by regular, daily Google ads – which is quite costly given the fact that you can’t go far even with $50 a day given the constantly rising cost – that’s dependancy short-term and long-term – or you invest once in the right Script and capture top entries on Google Top 10 on your desired keywords.

Monkey Valley Resort has made a smart choice with their new Semiomantics Website… it has paid off right from the start… and noone stops anyone from adding Google Ads… but now it’s a choice depending on one’s budget, it’s no longer a must. Be on the smart side of Internet Marketing; invest in an attractive and search engine efficient Semiomantics Website!

Integrating attractive sprites into a website where it makes sense by serving a specific purpose is another way of adding a personal touch, though one needs to bear in mind that there’s a lot of graphic design work in Photoshop involved, depending on the complexity of the sprite. For customers this obviously has an impact on the price.

Attractive Sprites

As I am in the process of restructuring my Author Blog, what I wanted is my slider at the top – offering examples of web design work done in various areas, eg. Media Design, Bookcover Design, Web Design etc.

This to be followed by a simple navigation bar that allows visitors to read about me, see some of my work, contact me, subscribe and click through to my very active and dynamic Blog – this combination is still work in progress and the corresponding change will be my next move.

Underneath that menu I wanted six little sprites with each leading to one of various services I offer when hovering over them.

And to end off the page there would be the usual Copyright in the footer. Nothing else.

This is what you can see on my Homepage on http://biancagubalke.com .

Hover with your mouse over any of the little images – composing the word DESIGN – and you will be guided to say my Showcase, my Shop or specific services that I offer. This will still be refined over time.

Of course, I could be more explicit on the images – but I like the curiosity effect myself… and this is not a commercial website.

Technically speaking, instead of having used 6 x 2 = 12 images (6 visible ads and 6 invisible messages subject to a hover or rollover effect) I only display 6 sprites, i.e. block background images that anchor the element itself.

Theoretically, I could have reduced this to one big sprite as well, showing a visible part… and hiding an invisible part.

Using Sprites

Using sprites in this way on a website or blog means – to my understanding – that while the cache swallows the whole image when downloading it for viewing, we have the possibility to only display a targeted part of it depending on where a visitor on the page might hover. Think Games industry… that’s where all this originally came from.

As proven by checking the amount of http-requests, this means saving time (as the image is already downloaded and opens fast when someone hovers over it) and bandwidth (as firstly the file size of the combined image is smaller and secondly we only download 1 image instead of two or many more).

The expression “sprite” in this sense originated from the computer graphics and video games industry as mentioned above. Look at a sprite as a combined graphic in a single block – it can be rather small as in my case or really big.

After creating tiny icon sprites a few months back as a first attempt to understanding the concept in general and applying it, I have ground my teeth into this subject as I am working on a website project where I want to use sprites to illustrate columns within a specific illustrative setup.

It’s work!

But then… it’s all about Web Design with Passion!

About Websites and Blogs Performance

A little earlier today I published an article with the title “About Websites and Blogs” – now let’s look at its Performance on Google.

About Websites and Blogs Performance and the Royal Wedding

As usual, my article on my Author Blog – on a Semiomantics XO Script – made it fast and furiously to the first pages of Google – not yet Google Top 10 – but search returns are a daunting 281 MILLION!!! Within just half an hour I found my post on spot 43 on 281,000,000… that’s lots more in numbers than were at the Royal Wedding today ! So let’s see where this little after-shot takes me.

As part of our duties in Semiomantics Web Design we monitor the performance of our blogs, websites and online publishing. If we don’t appear where we expect to be within a relatively short timeframe – say a few minutes – then we check what went wrong or what has changed. This constant control ensures that our clients can rely on the efficiency – and visibility – of their websites and blogs designed by the Semiomantics Team.

Noordhoek Garden before the Rain

Spring in Noordhoek means heavy gardening, especially weeding! Although it has been a dramatically dry winter as I can see from my dam – which has never been that low at this time of the year – we are lucky enough to still get some nice thunderstorms and showers. I just took a quick shot of my Noordhoek Garden before the rain… it started drizzling and the mushrooming clouds above the horizon and around Chapman’s Peak were darkening in a promising way… yet, nothing much happened! But I am sure it still will!

Noordhoek Garden before the Rain

An attractive Web Design for Website Publishing purposes is a lot about visuals, about media, about images… Accordingly, we have to keep learning and improving our skills… which comes with regular experience.

To keep training our eye as to the many artistic filter possibilities in Adobe Photoshop, just experiment daily and – while in my examples the effects are obvious – the more we know what does what and how, we can integrate certain ‘effects’ in an unobtrusive yet unique and astonishing way to give our images a special touch.

Here’s a blue mood example… which changes the atmosphere completely.

A simple filter… and who says it ain’t raining yet? I think, it’s the very first time I use this particular filter – but it makes sense, doesn’t it? It may not be the whole that strikes you, but perhaps a tiny detail that you want to remember for something specific in another photo… it won’t come to the mind without seeing or creating it in the first place!

Digital Photography

Digital Photography is a daily routine and only needs your digital camera, your eye, your readiness to move and rotate, ideally a tripod – and that’s it!

With our new Photo Media Stock needing lots of Stock Photography there’s no good photo lost – it may just be needed for something totally different. So it’s as always a matter of production – quality production!

Here come the rains. . .

Author: Bianca Gubalke, Art, Media, Publishing. Co-Founder of YORGOO, YCADEMY and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Nostalgia Bookcovers

Nostalgic Bookcovers seem to be an ongoing hit with a number of different groups of people – and I do understand why! If well done, meaning with lots of attention to detail, they have something precious and ‘whole’ about them… and if the content of the book itself is well-written, then the combination of valuable content and an exquisite book cover is a unique gift idea everybody simply loves, young and old…  even men. Ohhh… which gives me another idea… later!

Loving beautiful books myself and having crafted and illustrated a number of them in the ‘real’ world, I thought I’d venture into this area and design some Nostalgia Bookcovers the digital way – here’s my first ever example of its kind.

Nostalgia Bookcovers

To start off my Nostalgia Bookcovers, I was inspired by a beautifully crafted bookcover by a “Guttenberg”-something project… somewhere on the Internet; I don’t find it anymore. It had an old, handmade illustration on it featuring a little girl – a real nostalgic retro look.

In my imagination I saw my own hand-made illustrations – many of which I kept to this day – featuring on the covers… and one day they will, however, it seems my new computer and sophisticated programs don’t want to communicate with my older scanner anymore – they simply don’t click anymore . So this has to wait.

Meanwhile, I work with Digital Photographs from my meanwhile famous “Secret Garden”.

Everything on this book cover and those that will follow in future posts is originally crafted; after all these years with a ‘mouse’ it was quite an experience to go back and draw by hand using my little Bamboo tablet from WACOM… as I am still in camping-mode after heavy downpours destroyed part of my studio.

Nostalgia Bookcovers at WP Best eShop

These and the following Nostalgia Bookcovers are available at WP Best eShop featuring Bianca Gubalke Products under the Category “Attractive Bookcovers”.

If this sparks an interest in you and you want something like this for yourself or to bind your stories or writings, don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss your personal requirements and establish an acceptable price.

Watch out for the next Nostalgia Bookcovers . . .

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• Custom DVD Design Packaging
• Bookcovers for your Own Books
• Basic Photoshop Filter Challenge
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Affordable DVD Packaging

Affordable DVD Packaging was – amongst others – the topic of yesterday’s exciting Photoshop Ycademy Workshop and great Web Graphics Tutorial.

Affordable DVD Packaging

Is there a way for affordable DVD Packaging?

Well, there is the long way to elaborate all this in hundreds of little steps on Photoshop – that’s what I’ve learned and practised over quite a while based on studying the early Adobe Photoshop Bible 5 – and then there is today’s fast and spiffy way by using Actions or Action Scripts, where basically the whole process is extremely compressed into automatic processes with occasional ’stops’ to insert personalized data like a title, a name, a copyright… that deliver astonishing end products.

These Action Scripts allow even people who are no artists and who don’t intend to go that route… but who have equipped themselves properly with Photoshop and who wish to present their photos and images on Blogs and Websites in a professional and appealing way… to produce great results for say CD wrappers, attractive DVD Jewel cases and many other forms of packaging.

Of course, this is only possible because some professional Graphic Designer has gone the whole route of many little steps to create an Action Script – that basically recorded all these complex steps and wrapped it all up in a PRO Action product at a price or gives it away for ‘free’. Suddenly, anyone can get an eye-catching result at one or two mouse clicks. What’s important here is to find the real good actions between the many thousands out there on the Internet… but for this we have:

Photoshop Ycademy

Whenever working professionally, it is important to be properly equipped.

A good tool may have its price, but it’s all worth it as it saves us time and – if we know how to use it – it definitely gives us an edge over the competition.

Those Photoshop Ycademy Workshop participants who wish to reach the top – and with it a highly sophisticated clientele – have to continuously invest in high quality tools and their knowledge and skills to use them. However, this will allow them to focus on Productivity, get better results and have more music in their PayPal account at the end of the day.

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