Best Affordable Advertising

What’s the best affordable Advertising when starting out on the Internet?

Good question! it depends on how fast you want to go!

Best Affordable Advertising

To illustrate some of my thoughts about Best Affordable Advertising let’s look at Global Sports from London.

Global Sports offer one of the hottest products in our era of  fast mobility and people on the go: kicks, sneakers and blings.

However, despite a certain popularity in the normal world, Global Sports was literally non-existent on the Internet. . . until they got a Semiomantics Business setup…  which was soon upgraded to Semiomantics Ecommerce with the smashing Best Shopping module as featured in WP Best eShop. As their sales generated from their presence on the Internet continued to climb, they realized the need to even accelerate their rise to fame namely to:

• stay ahead of the competition,
• capture more Google Top 10 positions and keep them… and most importantly,
• double and triple their sales volume.

Ezine Advertsing

Today, you find Global Sports on most relevant keywords – and they are continuously building their Brand.

At the time, I created a series of ads to provide some affordable advertising for the Internet. To test our new Action Scripts as discussed in this week’s Photoshop Ycademy Workshops, I decided to go a step further and point out another interesting way of advertising: Ezine Advertising.

Global Sports Ezine Double Stack by Bianca Gubalke Design

Ezine Advertising is a smart strategy to keep people ‘in the loop’ and above you see what my initial preparation for the cover (first picture) turns into… once rendered in Step 2.

Again, it is important to follow the instructions regarding the Action Script, keep the layers in good order in Step 1, and not to forget to save the results in clearly marked folders – especially the ‘rendered’ ones – to be found again at a mouseclick when a new client wants “something similar…”.

Ezine Advertising for Global Sports by Bianca Gubalke Design

Web Design Consulting

Any form of Digital Advertising consists of some spiffy copywriting and captivating Web Graphics that talk. Get in touch with us at Web Design Consulting to discuss your needs and from there get a fair quote for what exactly you need in terms of Web Graphics Design and/or Text and targeted Slogans. Prices differ as usual according to complexity.

Talk to Bianca

If you need Captivating Web Graphics for your principal Ad, get in touch with me via the Contact Form on this site and let’s get that unique visual hook out there ASAP!

Go directly to our brand-new SHOP HERE.

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Read more…

• Affordable DVD Packaging
• Targeted Ad Delivery
• Presenting Web Design Graphics
• Semiomantics Business
• Building Your Personal Blog

Branding your Business online

The next step to Branding your Business online after purchasing and registering your domain is purchasing a hosting package to suit your business needs. Hosting is the step between your business and publishing it to the worldwide web. Offline a business takes its marketing materials to a publisher to be published and then distributed, online its to a hosting provider where your marketing material is made public online.

Hosting

There are any companies online that offer hosting packages, with varying features and prices. Most anyone can afford to buy basic hosting pack as prices have fallen over the past few years. However, one should not only be dictated by the price alone but also by the services that the hosting company provides.

Best Affordable Hosting

Identifying your business needs goes a long way to selecting the hosting package that will suit your budget and your specifications. At Small Business Consulting  we can help you assess your hosting needs and suggest  the best possible solution, however simple or complex it may be. If you are an internet marketer your needs will go way beyond a simple fun site that often you can get for free.

Hosting Features

Here are some hosting features in order of priority that I consider to be of paramount importance when considering and selecting a web hosting provider.  As a user of various hosting companies I realise these to be important:  

Customer Support

I remember when I first started how important this service was:  good, reliable customer support, providing technical assistance  and solutions as and when needed. Even today when something goes amiss it is important to have assistance from customer support.

Backups

It is important to know that the hosting provider can provide backup and has a regular backup routine in place. This however should not stop you from setting up your own backup and maintenance routine.

Web Space

Your account will require a certain amount of web space, and as you grow you need reassurance that you can also expand according to your needs.

Reliability and Access

No hosting company can really guarantee 100% uptime, those really unforeseen downtime’s do happen as well occasional short downtime for major maintenance. A good hosting company will deal with emergencies immediately and there should be very little disruption to the running of your online business. Speedy access to a website is also an important feature to considered in order that visitors are not lost by slow working websites.

At ChiHosters we provide an excellent service with hosting plans starting at:

* No Limit Shared Hosting: U$35 per year.

*Semiomantics Pro Hosting for Advanced Semiomantics Publishing: U$ 29.95 per month

* Hosting Reseller Plan (WHM): U$99.99 per month

* VSM 20GB Allocated Virtual Managed Server: U$150.00 per month
Sell WHM Reseller Packs

•Increased configuration and flexibility
•Increased uptime and security
•Full Root access
•100% Management and Monitoring – This means we worry about your server, and you worry about your sales!
•The ability to sell reseller accounts
•Based on a Dual AMD Opteron 275, 8GB ram and 20GB HD space dedicated to you.

Other options are also available on demand. Discussing your specific needs with a Consultant or hosting providing can result in a unique and satisfactory hosting solution designed especially for you.

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Read more..

• Christmas 2009 and beyond
• Web Design for FreeLeadsandFreeTraffic
• Web Design
• NewsCast Script by YORGOO
• Photoshop Action Scripts fun
• Branding your business online
• Discovering Photoshop – Action Scripts
• Discovering Photoshop
• Photoshop Tutorials
• Internet Marketing Services

Branding your business online.

There are many businesses out there online these days, each business promoting its own specific product/s. To be noticed each business has its own image of the product it sells in the market. Branding your business online is one of the most important elements of advertising.
One of the first steps to branding your business is the name you choose for that business.

Brand Name

The name you choose becomes your “brand name” a type of trademark, used to identify you on any marketing material you use, from letterheads to T-shirts and identifies you as the brand owner of the products or services you provide.

Domain Registration

Register the Brand Name

Online we register the brand name by registering a domain name. Offline the owner of a business can do this through trademark registration, protecting his rights to the brand. Whether you run a small home business or  any project online registering your domain on the internet is a must , and the first investment into your business online.

Domain Registration

Domain registration is a very simple process of selecting a name, filling out a form and making a payment.

At Cashbizzhost we sell internet domain name registrations with a premium service. You will find our domain names to be one of the best values around.

Domain Registration Prices

Top Level Domain name (TLD) a .com is offered at:

* U$12.95 per domain for 1 year
* U$25.00 per domain for 2 years

Other domains such as country-code top-level domains and generic top level domains are offered at varying prices.

Cashbizzhost also offers many FREE SERVICES with domain registration:

* 100 personalized email addresses -
Create up to 100 personalized email addresses and forward them to other email addresses.

* Web/URL forwarding -
Forward/redirect/frame your domain name to any other URL/website on the web.

* Name-my-phone -
Give your phone a memorable, meaningful, identity.

* Name-my-map -
Ever want to give someone directions to your home or business, with an easy to remember name?

With every registered user we offer full customer support.

For more information feel free to contact me to discuss your requirements.

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The Purpose of a Website

What is the purpose of a website? And why would you want to have a website if you can get free access to other people’s websites such as to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace,YouTube and others?

Expand your Business to the Internet

For businesses, the primary purpose of a website is to expand business and to mark a presence where existing and prospect customers can be met.  A website allows to bring the sales pipeline right in front of customers, allowing for 24/24 sales activity, follow up and product delivery (for digital products and automated services).

globalMove your mouse over image or click to enlarge

Best Kicks at Global Sports US

Build Brand Recognition and Notoriety

An important purpose of a website is to build and expand brand recognition. In a fast moving society where visual recognition is important, a permanent visual presence helps to build a reflex. For example: if you see TaxMartPro ads for online tax filing all over the place, the day you need their services, you remember the name and you will look for that company specifically to find the solution to your problem.

Preserve and impact on the Image of the Business – Goodwill

The reputation of a company is defined by what other people say about it. For any business it has become a must, not to abandon Image Building to third party comments, but to get involved in the process of steering the public perception of the business and it’s products, management and culture.

Communication with a market or a social environment

A website allows to reach out for new markets and to be available to potential customers in targeted environments, such as social networks.

Increase the level of service to customers

An important purpose of a website can be to allow 24/24 communication with customers, be it for follow-up and customer care services, support or to build conversation with interested parties concerning the company, the products or more. This last purpose provides companies with feed-back which can be analyzed and give a fair idea about perception and as the case may be popularity.

googlewaveMove your mouse over image or click to enlarge

Connect with Google Wave

Let other people build your business

An important purpose of a website can be to let other people build your business. The best example are Social Networks or Google. All the content, which is the essence is provided by the Members or Publishers, who also build the conversation, the traffic and who constitute the prospect leads at the same time.More traditional models, such as affiliate programs have the same purpose, however affiliates are paid in liquid for resulting sales or marketing efforts.

Decrease development cost and business expansion budgets

Building an online business structure is cheaper than building an offline shop down-town. Also, open source projects allow to achieve product development without development cost, since developers will contribute for free; examples: Google Wave, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and more.

Decrease advertising cost

An interesting purpose of a website is to decrease advertising cost per sale. The internet revolution has entailed an advertising revolution. Everybody has the same chances to gain high visibility, using for example Google Ads or Search Engine Optimization. The cost is relatively small compared with the potential output.

Semiomantics and Ycademy offer purpose oriented website building

Semiomantics and Ycademy build customized purpose focused websites. While Semiomantics provides the technical services and infrastructure, Ycademy provides the educational component which allows interested parties to build their own sites or to commercialize similar services.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press 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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Follow Us on Twitter and Facebook

Finally, Monkey Valley Resort can shout loud and clear: “Follow Us on Twitter!” and “Follow Us on Facebook!”

Follow Us on Twitter and Facebook

While it may be totally normal for Internet Marketers and Social Network professionals to have a Twitter and Facebook account and to invite everyone to “Follow Us on Twitter and Facebook”, this is by far not the case – yet – with many of our customers. In fact, it can take quite some effort and persuasion to get the accounts set up and then  connect the new website to both Twitter and Facebook!

While we want to automate the posting process itself from one end – for instance with a plugin – visitors to the website need to find the famous little blue bird to ‘tweet’ or the big blue “F” to follow and like – or a personalized version to “follow” as I designed for the new Monkey Valley Resort website, using the branded little logo with the monkey on the golden triangle.

More on the branding issue in a minute…

Brand Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and your Website

Branding your online presence is an essential part of building your business and optimizing your visibility. Here is a sample of an integrated brand image throughout social networks based on a personal website.

The Branding Elements on the Website

The base for our sample is a Semiomantics XO Framework based on WordPress.

Grunge Web Design by Yorgo Nestoridis

As I write this site is HERE.

The background and grunge fonts and elements are the main branding elements on this transparent blog.

Backgrounds can be imported into many social networks, such as Twitter and YouTube. This is probably the easiest way to adapt the look and feel of your social network pages to your preferences.

Branding Twitter

Twitter lets you import your own background which will change the look immediately:

Grunge Background on Twitter by Yorgo Nestoridis

My Twitter is HERE.

Branding YouTube

You tube customization allows even for transparent backgrounds:

Grunge Design on YouTube by Yorgo Nestoridis

Check out my YouTube HERE.

Branding Facebook with a Customized Profile Picture

Facebook Profile Picture by Yorgo Nestoridis

Facebook is still very limited in as much as customization is concerned. However, we will show a few more ways to re-look your Facebook to taste, just follow our posts.

Join tonight’s online Workshop to customize your Facebook Profile Picture at 8 pm London Time on YorgoTalk.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Read also:

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• Web Design Workshop 16 – Scroll over Background
• Transparent WordPress Theme Design
• Transparent WordPress Semiomantics XO
• Fancy Fonts Headers

In my website development for the new Monkey Valley Resort website I am exploring my own ways of doing things – here an example of how to present a restaurant menu online:

How to Present a Restaurant Menu

Of course, it was easy to just type the restaurant menu out… and that’s what I did initially after receiving it from Darren Byrne… the usual copy/paste scenario, correcting little errors and/or beauty issues… and that’s it! Especially as I had designed a special slide to announce that the Sunday Lunches are back at Thorfynn’s Restaurant – requested by many… and of course with LIVE Music.

However, I wanted to find a personal touch even for a simple issue like this… meaning how to present a restaurant menu with style.

Branding Darren Byrne

Branding Darren Byrne, Restaurant Manager at Thorfynn’s, is increasingly important. So here’s for a start: you will see “Recommended by Darren Byrne” with everything relating to the Restaurant… and I may even shoot a photo where he smiles at us… but typically he always checks that his customers are happy, meaning looking down at their plates and glasses !

I am still waiting for the Booking Sytem so I can link it and visitors can book with one click. For the time being it’s still via email and the telephone – or use the Comment Box or the Contact Form on the website.

We’ll get there …

Branding by Ycademy

It has been a long way to brand yourself, your business or your online presence. Now it’s time to implement your brand. next week’s Ycademy Seminar will, amongst others, focus on the implementation of your image.

Branding your Website

The exercise with Semiomantics XO RC is finished and the resulting brand elements are implemented on your site:

Implementation on my Design Site.

Branding your Social Networks

Import your brand elements to your social network sites where allowed:

Implementation on Twitter.

Branding your Media Site

Your Brand extends to your Media sites:

Implementation on YouTube.

Look forward to a busy October Ycademy Online Seminar!

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Read also:

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• How to get High Visibility on Facebook
• Ycademy Seminars in October 2009
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A header graphics can be as simple or complex as you desire them to be. They are the first thing a reader sees when opening your site. A header needs to be striking and memorable and yet not distracting.

Web Design Header Graphic

For this site I have continued the theme as used in my other sites and kept the header graphic plain and simple by using a striking free font. There are many fonts freely available online that will distinguish your site fom the usual microsoft default fonts.

Once you have decided on a font to use you can create a header graphic using a free image editor. The font I have selected is the  Sebastion Font. Using the editor select the size of graphic you require and use the font for the text. Save and upload the file to the image folder 0n your site.

Web Design Header Graphic.

Web Design Header Graphic

Of course you can be as creative as you like, see the examples below:

Graphic header by Ute Schaedler.

Header Graphic by Ute Schaedler

Graphic header by Larrie Perkins.

Graphic Header by Larrie Perkins

Having written a post about branding Small Business Ideas I noticed that when the post was published the blockquote was hugging the visual presentation as you see from the image below.

Small Business Ideas branding

Blockquote , pullquote

As you can see from the above blockquote that is used to illustrate the codes used, it totally hugs the graphic. This error can be easily rectified by just correcting the margin of the blockquote in the stylesheet.

By changing:

This:margin: 0 0 0 30px;
to this: margin: 0 0 30px 30px;

we create a margin of 30px below the blockquote, thus seperating the blockquote from the image. Visually, this is more acceptable as you can see from the result below.

Small Business Ideas branding

As projected in yesterday’s post, we researched and executed further ideas for an Apple Touch Icon for Psychic Readings Online, here the Greek Psi representing Psychic Readings Online by Delia O’Riordan.

Apple Touch Icon for Psychic Readings Online

Besides taking the Branding elements – like fonts and/or colors, logos and patterns – of the website in question into account, the crucial issue is: how does a brilliant looking image show on the high resolution screen of an iPhone 4?

How to create an Apple Touch Icon

These images are by far not the first; in fact, each mobile web development within the Semiomantics Web Design framework teaches a significant lesson and reveals more of the crucial factors to consider when developing an icon – like here the Apple Touch Icon for Psychic Readings Online.

So how to create an Apple Touch Icon?

As a matter of principle, I create my Apple T0uch Icons on 520 x 520 px, transparent, 16 bit with a resolution 300. While the above sizes are reduced for this article, it is essential to create a version 114 x 114 px and 57 x 57 px as you see here:

How the above icons show on the mobile phone remains to be seen. I’ll be back with screenshots!

Meanwhile, enjoy some screenshots of Psychic Readings Online on the iPhone 4 – see int he sidebar to your right!

As projected in yesterday’s post, we researched and executed further ideas for an Apple Touch Icon for Psychic Readings Online, here the Greek Psi representing Psychic Readings Online by Delia O’Riordan.

Apple Touch Icon for Psychic Readings Online

Besides taking the Branding elements – like fonts and/or colors, logos and patterns – of the website in question into account, the crucial issue is: how does a brilliant looking image show on the high resolution screen of an iPhone 4?

How to create an Apple Touch Icon

These images are by far not the first; in fact, each mobile web development within the Semiomantics Web Design framework teaches a significant lesson and reveals more of the crucial factors to consider when developing an icon – like here the Apple Touch Icon for Psychic Readings Online.

So how to create an Apple Touch Icon?

As a matter of principle, I create my Apple T0uch Icons on 520 x 520 px, transparent, 16 bit with a resolution 300. While the above sizes are reduced for this article, it is essential to create a version 114 x 114 px and 57 x 57 px as you see here:

How the above icons show on the mobile phone remains to be seen. I’ll be back with screenshots!

Meanwhile, enjoy some screenshots of Psychic Readings Online on the iPhone 4 – see int he sidebar to your right!

Continuing from yesterday’s post on Custom Icon Design where I featured the  black & white version for a simple yet sophisticated Icon Design, here is another version where I integrate the color red that is usually part of the color scheme and branding of the website.

Custom Icon Design

Developing Custom Icon Design in black & white is one thing – adding a color to it while keeping the simple yet sophisticated look is quite a different story. Not that this is what everyone wants as obviously it all depends on the product, service or Brand you represent or sell, but the point is that a professional icon is not done in a snap. In fact, icon design is a profession in itself – and certainly one with a promising future over the next years … just think of all the mobile web applications and Apple Touch Icons needed alone!

Icon Design for Magnetic Transport Surplus

When researching an Icon Design for your personal blog, you may want to work with your initials, either one of them or your first name and last name as I did here – unless you have a logo that is big enough to show on 114 x 114 pixels (see above) or even on 57 x 57 pixels as you see here below:

When working on a Custom Web Design for a company and if you are requested to create an Icon as part of the project, the research can take you much further as you see here on my professional Icon Design for Magnetic Transport Surplus. Your goal must be to find ways to integrate the whole ‘touch & feel’ of the company. If you achieve this, chances are that the icon is quickly adopted and replicated in all sorts of ways, gaining cross-platform recognition value offline and online and forming an important part of the Branding.

Design your Mobile Brand

Your mobile brand is not all that different from what you show on the desktop version of your site. However, the mobile web offers some features which we can use by respecting particular design criteria. One of these features are Apple Touch Icons.

Semiomantics Mobile Branding – Apple Touch Icons

As we are redesigning the Semiomantics Brand, we are thinking of the mobile web exposure. The brand elements must be visible on mobile devices. Here some test icons:

While I like the font, which expresses well Semiomantics ambition for precision and elegance, we have to test it in the iPhone:

If you click the image you will get the original iPhone 4 screen-shot at 640 pixels wide. However already here you can see the design quality of the different icons, whereas the BMC icon from Semiomantics looks pretty sharp.

Here is another version:

Above, the Blog Master Icon with the globe is styled similar to the Apple Settings icon :-).

Fonts

The font may be a bit thin and the border stroke could support some development, but it is a good start.

More screen-shots:

Or a zoomed version:

Yes, we are working on it and improve what looks like a promising start :-).

Related posts:

1. Create Apple Touch Icons and Startup Images
2. Apple Touch Icon Tutorial
3. Apple Peel for WordPress
4. Google Top 10 with Semiomantics for WordPress
5. Semiomantics Mobile Developments

Streamline your Branding

The December Seminar will take place on Sunday, December 19, 2010, starting at 1 pm London Time and ending at 9 pm.

Integrated Branding

Looking at your publishing network you may notice that your branding lacks consistency. The seminar will focus on streamlined branding and help every participant to end up with streamlined branding providing visitors with a more satisfactory surf experience. Streamlined branding increases visitors and sales.

The following elements will be dealt with:

Color Scheme

Fonts

Brand Logo or Image

Images and Media Components

We will start to work on these elements at our calls and Workshops this week.

The branding will then be implemented throughout the individual publishing networks:

Author Blog

Consultant Blog

Shop

Press News Cast

Join tonight’s call to find out more and to start working on your Brand integration. Important: be there tonight as you will get some pre-seminar tasks since the seminar is just a 1 day event.

Tickets are available from HERE.

Ycademy Pros: get your discount code from Bianca Gubalke as usual.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Related posts:

1. Ycademy Online Seminar December 12-13, 2009
2. Microsoft Office 2010 Seminar by Ycademy
3. Ycademy Seminar March 2010
4. Ycademy Online Seminar January 2010
5. News and Thanksgiving Turkey for Ycademy Seminar

Banner Design Contest

The new website for Semiomantics and the related Affiliate Program need attractive banners. To get some inspiration we hereby launch a Design Contest whereas you may either remain within the actual design parameters of Semiomantics or create something completely out of the box.

1. Design Parameters

At present we use the ‘Capture it’ font for the branding (logo, headers etc). You may download it from here.

2. Sizes

The following banner sizes are needed:

• 468×60
• 125×125
• 300×300
• 300×250
• 250×250
• 728×90

Also you may want to shoot for a Page Peel Ad as loaded on the top right corner of this site. The small image (special offer) is 75×75 pixels, the large ad is 500×500.

3. Examples

Banner 468×60

Page Peel Ad 500×500

4. Format

All submissions in .psd (Photoshop Format) and either jpg, png or gif.

5. Delay

To enter the competition you must mail your zip files containing the psd plus a browser friendly format to Bianca and/or to myself  by tomorrow Thursday, November 25, 2010 6 pm London time (one hour before the call).

5. Price

We will discuss the results at tomorrow’s call at 7 pm London and reveal the winners.

The winning banners of each size will fetch $20 each, unless Nikos Advertizopoulos decides otherwise :-).

Tips from Nikos Advertizopoulos

1. Be smart, know your client and deliver something he likes; he likes black/white/gray and red as a color scheme.
2. Now as you have made your tribute to hypocrisy, go wild, think out of the box and imagine Semiomantics branding YOUR way!
3. Whatever size you develop, think about the fact that the design must be usable in all sizes.
4. Think about the display of the ads: they must look great on the sites they are published on, in fact make the ads more beautiful than whatever other graphics may be on publishing websites.
5. Now do a belly button dance and design a banner you would just love to have on your own website: apply colors and styles which fit your site and don’t give a darn about what HE may like. Last but not least: if you are the only submission in French or German, you have a good chance to succeed.

Note: You may submit multiple entries. Also, if you win, it may result in more work … you know your customer … but also in more rewards.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press 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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How to Edit a WordPress Wiki

In yesterday’s Online Workshop, we went into “How to Edit a WordPress Wiki” – amongst others… and as some members couldn’t attend and asked me about it today, here are the basic considerations and steps.

First of all, click on the image above and have a look at my screenshot to see what enabling and using the WP Wiki plugin actually does – from a visual aspect on your Semiomantics Author Blog. Look where the snaking arrow is pointing. See the little box featuring the headlines of the Content of this post?

Why use a WordPress Wiki?

So why use a WordPress Wiki in the first place when you are showing your headlines anyway?

Good question… but the secret is again in what plays behind the scenes, in the mysterious intricacies of code and… the way it communicates with Google. Although this little Content container may allow a quick practical overview as to what main topics are being dealt with within the post, much more important is that Google search engines pick them up very easily and in a very clear and concise way… if set up correctly that is – and they will send us flowers… meaning support our Semiomantics powered websites and blogs on their way to Google Top 10!

How to get a WordPress Wiki?

Simply go to the Dashboard of your Blog, click on Add New under Plugins, and pull in the WP Wiki, instal and enable.

You will find Wiki Settings under your settings on the left side of your Dashboard. Set them to your requirements. I just have a number to reduce what I want to show… but most importantly, when you now go to a post – existing or new – and scroll all the way down, you see right at the bottom 2 items you should now tick to enable the WP Wiki Contents Box on your post:

Firstly, “This page/post is a wiki friendly page and may be edited by authors and contributors” and

secondly, “Enable Table of Contents”.

If you go to an existing post – that has at least a <h2> headline and ideally some <h3> sub-titles – looking at it from outside on your blog as a reader would do, you now see the Contents box.

If you went to a new post, you need to write a post first, including an <h2> as a minimum – otherwise nothing will show – and then enabling the WP Wiki at the bottom by ticking the two tick boxes as explained above – you will have the same effect.

How to Edit a WordPress Wiki

The question now is: How to Edit a WordPress Wiki?

Why would you want to do this?

Well – as you read in my previous post “The Color Pink” – once you are into more sophisticated Blogging and you apply a specific color scheme – in other words Color Branding – to your Blog or Website, you want your WP Wiki to integrate into your blog.

If your background colors are all in the yellows – as on Joe Ceguna’s Blog – you don’t want your WordPress Wiki to stand out in glaring white like a violent ad… you want the background to be tone-in-tone for instance, and you may want a little fine frame in another color of your color scheme around the contents, or a bold dark tab with Contents written on it… or not, or a double line or no lines at all… and when people hover with their mouse over a title you want it to change in one way or another…

Well all these details can be easily adapted when you go to your SmartFTP and open the plugin under themes.

In the WordPress Wiki plugin folder you will find – amongst other files – the style.css.

Open it with PSpad and work your way through it – it’s easy enough. The best way is to implement one change at a time. Say you change the background from #FFFFFF (white) to #222222 (grey-black) because your blog is black or you want a black box. Just do it on the stylesheet, save and refresh your blog to see how it looks.

Once satisfied, move on to the next styling item, eg. the hover color. Maybe you want it to be a bright red, so change it to say #FF0000 – like here:

div.contents a:hover {
color:#FF0000;
}

Change the font-family if you want sans-serif fonts and here it’s coming in with serif fonts.

I wouldn’t fiddle too much with the padding etc as that looks pretty neat already as you see, but best is to save a copy of the original stylesheet and play with the new version until you see what you want – then your goal is reached: you’ve edited your WP Wiki to integrate perfectly with its surroundings and another big step in customizing your blog – or that of a customer – has been done. I hope this helped with your Website Publishing… and don’t forget:

~ without an >h2< heading nothing works.

~ Without an activated plugin nothing works.

~ Without ticking the 2 little ticks on your editor’s page where you write and edit a post, right at the bottom of it, and then saving it… nothing works.

Once everything is done correctly, it works :). Now wasn’t that a clever statement – duh????

And yes… without the server being up and running, nothing works either as I notice at this moment… but the good news is, sooner or later it will be back, so I will grab an apple and enjoy some South African sunshine! I just ricked those 2 little Wiki boxes right at the bottom and … Publish! See what it shows on my post… once it rises back into the virtual world :)

The Color Pink

After spending most of my day on PowerPoint researching how to best add a prepared mp3 audio file to a prepared slideshow – something I had previously created in the video format on Camtasia and where I know exactly what note has to come with which slide… and this attempt was enough to drive me up the wall today and I needed some fresh and cheerful Chi… and see what I got as a colorful snapshot featuring the color Pink! I mean PINK!

The Color Pink

The color Pink definitely gets its extraordinary vibrancy on this digital photo by its juxtaposition with the locust’s green! Especially as it has been raining most of the day, this was so bright one couldn’t miss it! Luckily, I wasn’t a hungry bird of prey or a merciless meerkat… as this would have been a delicious evening snack! Accordingly, the semi-transparent insect quickly climbed under cover after snatching a moment of sunshine to stretch its legs and warm up before the next shower went down.

All this to marvel at the magnificent color combinations Nature offers us if we just open eyes and look around us!

Color Branding

When starting a new blog or website for a customer, the color scheme is one of the first aspects we need to deal with in terms of the visible part of the website design.

Companies mostly have their Color Branding in place; in other words a color scheme we need to know and then observe throughout the Website Development.

However, sometimes a customer wants the Semiomantics Web Designer to choose the colors. In my view, almost all colors are beautiful… but there are colors that enhance others when combined with them – or they reach the opposite effect. This is something to be aware of and bear in mind – depending also on the target audience, especially its age… and the current trends.

If not too sure about your taste and skills when it comes to Color Combinations, use one of the many really helpful Color Wheels freely avaiable on the Internet. As usual, Google will help!