Do you need a Website or a Blog?

Which one is the best for you a website, or a blog? If that is a question you have let me share some experiences with you that might help. Let’s start with a website. Personal websites are a great way to present your talents, skills, and training to the internet world; kind of like a personal electronic resume interested people can read 24-7 and interact with, if you have setup your website for that purpose. Whether you’re a carpenter, mechanic, technician, or in between job nurse, a personal website is one of the posting your job skill qualifications to more employers. A lot of my friends are musicians and their personal websites have not only helped them get gigs, but also helped them promote their other musical skills, like song writing, or musicianship.

There are places on the internet like LinkedIn that can be helpful if you’re job shopping, but even places like LinkedIn offer you the link space to show your own business or personal website. If you’re an organization, or part of an organization, a website can help you spread the word about your organization in ways that to me are more helpful than phone calls, or flyers, and allow interested people to interact with you instantly night or day, weekday or weekend, to grow your membership, or donations.

E-Commerce websites allow you to both advertise and sell products, so if you produce your own product, or sell the products from others an e-commerce website can help you keep track of sales, and run a successful online store. If what you plan to sell is your service (information, technical repair, insurance, medical, holistic, or other service) your website can serve as your online interactive business card. In many cases and online business card that let people who visit your website, see, and hear your message.

A Blog is usually more text and expression related so if you enjoy writing, especially about something you are passionate about perhaps a blog will serve you best. In my case the word passionate translates to simply knowing a little something about the person, place, or thing I plan to write about. Usually the more I research or come to know about my chosen subject the more passionate about my writing I become. When it comes to blogging it’s about sharing what you know and feel about something with your readers. Example: when it comes to writing I usually think in terms of writing a letter to a friend; what I mean is if I discover something, or find something interesting about writing, gardening, or some other interest of mine, my next step is usually to think in terms of sharing that information in a letter that becomes my blog post to a friend (you, the reader).

 

The real trick for a first time blogger is how not to convince yourself that you really have nothing to write about. You may not always be in the mood to write, I know that’s true for me, but what seems to count most in blogging, besides dispensing all sorts of useful information, is your own personal experience with people, places, and things.  Sure everyone can do and experience the same things, but what was your own personal experience? What stood out most to you?

Whether you enjoy working with your hands, sewing, cooking, or planting a garden don’t be afraid to share that passion or information about the effect it has on you, or how it makes you feel. Especially if what you are passionate about stimulates feelings you don’t mind sharing. You might be surprised how some topic you consider boring generates an interest in others. Naturally I can only sight what works for me when it comes to writing down my thoughts; something I’m still working on. With regard to blogging, I will say this, if you are an author (published, self-published, or unpublished) you should have your own blog. Blogging is a great way to keep in touch with your readers, and keep your followers up-to-date about you, your writing projects, appearances, and new releases.

For those in which the desire to write is already in your DNA, having your own blog had even been responsible for the selling of a few more of your books, articles, and short stories than usual. That’s just one of at least a hundred good examples I can think of for having your own blog. You should know your needs when it comes the website vs a blog question, and there are web designers and blog designers out there ready to help you focus on your internet goals.

Since I first became involved with the internet over ten years ago I have watched internet capabilities grow in leaps and bounds from personal computers and dot-coms in the early days, to laptops and Y-Fi growing the amount of people with access to the internet, followed by tablets you can take anywhere and now cellphones with all the operational perks of the old comic book hero Dick Tracy’s wrist radio, so what will it be, website, or blog?

Free Clipart

All websites end up in need of some sort of artwork, be-it a logo, artwork or photographs for a blog post, or perhaps a diagram that shows the computer, telephone, or social network your writing describes. This article is about how you can get that artwork for free. I’m talking about artwork that has been placed in the public domain, meaning artwork free of copyright fees that can be used commercially on your website or blog. The place in particular I am referring to is Openclipart.org, you will find their link below. Openclipart.org has thousands of great looking clipart selections on just about any subject you search their site for.

The artwork is located safely in the public domain and once you signup you can download the clipart you need; by-the-way signup for Open-clipart dot org is free. If you’re an artist you can contribute to their collection of clipart by adding some of your own artwork. What you contribute will also be place in public domain and available to other Open-clip-art members to use, copyright free. So don’t send anything you want to stay copyrighted protected.

I have found this site to be very useful when it comes to my clipart needs. Even though I can draw, a little, and have contributed (mostly mechanical object and things no people art forms yet) this site has become a time saver for me. So whether you can draw a little, like me, or not at all like some in my household, when it comes to your website or blog’s clipart needs Open-clipart should be very helpful for you.

If you have more specific artwork needs, like a custom specialized logo design, book cover, or other unique creation, and you have at least five-dollars to throw around, I would suggest Fiverr as a good and reasonable option. As you can tell by its name, Fiverr is not free, but the prices for the work done there is what I very reasonable. There are people in the Fiverr website ranks who will write your product description information for you; and others who will write blog articles for you if you have a blog rather than a product of service website. For five-bucks one of the talented artist or writers at Fiverr can help you with your written text or artwork needs. 

I’m sure a search for Free Clipart services will net even more free-clipart sources. You might even be able to do a little free clipart comparison shopping. Hopefully the suggestions I make here, with regard to clipart for your website or blog, will help you work smarter, not harder, and prevent you from giving up on the artwork you need just because you didn’t excel in art class, or because five buck is a little out of your reach right now, can’t beat Free Clipart.  Openclipart.org

Web Hosting

Whether your website is set up for business, to promote an organization, or for individual or personal use, one of the first steps to take is to have your site customized to fit the needs of your intended audience, customers, members, or fans, so that they can to buy from you, sign up with your organization, or learn more about your talent in a given area though a personal website.  Whether you do all this, or pay someone to do it for you, all of the above leads to the creation of different files and pieces of data that will eventually come to represent the makeup of your website.

Depending on the type of website you choose and in order to present your web location information on the World-Wide-Web your next step will be to find a source that will share your website information with the world.  That is what web hosting is; finding an Internet Service Provider (or ISP) that can host the website you have just built by storing all of the files and other necessary data associated with your website, while at the same time making your website available to your intended audience 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The collection of files and data that make up your site is also usually what determines the price you will pay for web hosting services. Individual web pages are usually offered for free and require little file, or data storage space. Organizational website requirements are a little more complicated due to records that need to be stored; things like membership, accounting and non-profit data (if applicable) for income in the form of a subscription, or donation needs to be recorded and along with any services you will provide (newsletter, regular updates or other unique information) for your website audience.

Business websites can be complicated because of sales records, inventory of incoming and outgoing stock item, record keeping, returns, coupons, keeping track of different methods of payment sources and more. Most business websites are not included in the Free Website range, and the ones that are will usually be severely limited in their business operation scope. However most of the above mentioned services do come already built into some website templates. Once you have decided on the type of website you, your business, or organization will need you’re ready to go ISP hunting, provided your ISP isn’t already part of your website package.

So how many different ISPs are there? As of December back in 2012 I had read about twenty different Internet Service Providers. More recently Askville, by Amazon, says there are anywhere from 3500 to 4000 ISPs in the United States.

As for which ISP is best for you, that will depend on how you answered the above (what kind of website do I want) question? Some ISPs offer themselves for free, even helping you get setup up for free and in no time your website is up and running on the Information Super Highway and headed for search engine land. But that’s another article just be aware that there are probably as many different search engines out there in cyber space as there ISPs. Staying on topic, some IPSs are free, free ISPs usually have advertisers as sponsors, meaning you have no choice but to put up with the advertisements shown on your free website.

Then there is what I call free, with a small fee; ISPs that charge a small subscription fee for virtually unlimited internet access. It’s been my experience that a free IPS for a business website usually means that your website access may not be limited, but your storage space is. Of course for a small fee you can have your storage space or other restriction expanded too. I have seen many different limiting factors that include everything from the lack of data storage space to the inability to place associate ads on your website, unless you’re willing to pay another small fee, or move on up to paying for a higher subscription level.

While it’s true that nothing much beats FREE, I think the paid ISP services are better if you’re taking a business website. Mainly because you have more control, and as I already implied, the size and type of website that you have is what usually dictates your true website expense. A lot of the ISPs I know of have even figured out a sweet spot between their newbie single page personal website user, and their blow the doors off full-fledged Fortune Five-Hundred website user. A sweet spot where small business can not only thrive but grow due to the non-restrictions and internet access offered, at what I would consider a good price, (less than one-hundred dollars a year) along with some pretty neat, and very much appreciated 24/7 Technical Support; which will come in handy if your website will require ASP.Net, Cold-fusion, PHP, or Java script.

Website hosting basically means you are leasing the necessary space on an ISP’s computer server to store your website data, and to connect your website to the internet. One of the big issues with ISPs is the protection of your website data transmission and keeping it secure with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) which means, over a span of time moving from one system (HTTP) to another (HTTPS) to better protect your data information, especially if your website deals with the maintaining of personal data such as membership and personal data.

I started with Yahoo as my ISP back in 2007 and had few complaints the thing I liked most about Yahoo was the technical service. Back then my job in science and engineering made my work, and awake-hours crazy so I never really knew at what hour of the day, night, or weekend, I might find myself in front of my computer screen piecing together my first website. It felt really good, and was also really helpful to be able to pick up the phone at any time to get the technical help I needed to understand and work with my ISP choice.

Since that time I have worked with many different ISPs and have amassed a knowledge of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, so-to-speak. Recently Yahoo has changed its name, at least where their ISP service is concerned, and became Aabaco; the change is still too new for me to give an accurate account of the new management changes, except to say there are some, so stay tuned!

Back on topic, try to have as many of your ducks in a row before you go ISP shopping, what I mean is know the kind of website you want, and the name, one of the shockers for me when creating my first website was that after working on, honing, and sharpening the name I wanted to call my web business I was rejected early in the process, several time, because the name I chose to use was no longer unique. Only about two million people before me had come up with the same idea for that domain name.

The computer of course tried to help by making several suggesting on how I might change the name by adding numbers before, or after it and eventually I did settle on one of the numbered versions, but it just wasn’t the same. I got over it and at the same time became a little wiser about domain name selection when setting up a website. Anyway it helps to have a couple alternative version of your intended website domain name, just in case.

Choosing the right residential or business ISP package will help with your near and long term plans for you website. Only you, or your webmaster, (the person that takes care of your website for you) will know if your needs will include an application development platform, or whether you’re okay for the long run with just a few pages for your website or will you need a little headroom to grow.  Some homework and hopefully this article should help. Or at the very least arm you with some questions for the ISP you choose. As with just about any other business venture, you pay for what you don’t know, one way or the other. The more you know and understand about website hosting the better your ISP choice.

The Internet in the U.S.

Trusted ISP

Responsive Website Design

Before I get started with today’s blog entry (about website responsive design) I wanted to take a moment to say that this blog was started by me to share some of the most basis information about starting, promoting, and maintaining a website, even though I am not a computer professional most of the information I share is from experience and articles I have read from computer professionals. If you are a computer programming professional though, this blog is not for you, but I can use your help.

If on the other hand you sometimes find yourself in quiet celebration for having mastered yet another feature of your Windows operating system, (known by the pros as the OS) and if you know, or understand very little HTML code, welcome to my world. Much of my online website experience comes from operating my own website for the past few years, which is only about $999,800.00 short of being a million dollar website.

But  I have to admit that some of the website tips, and lessons, I have passed on, and plan to pass on in the future have been very helpful to me, so by sharing perhaps some of the articles I have done, and plan to do on the subject of “making your own website” will prove helpful to you too. It would really be nice if you let me know when something does work for you, so don’t be afraid to leave a note or say hello, now on to today’s information about responsive website design.

RWD stands for Responsive Web Design which means basically that a website with responsive design can be view on several different platforms (laptop, desktop, cell phone, tablet) equally, or with just enough alteration to still give a visitor to your website the most complete view of your web-page content. So a responsive design simply allows your website content can be view comfortably on many different viewing devices.

A long time ago in the ancient days of website design, I’m talking at least seven or eight years ago, in computer years. The website design templates I had to choose from did not include responsiveness. You’re probably smiling if you’re a computer programmer because responsive website design was probably taught in Kindergarten-computer-programming. I don’t know that for sure of course, but what I do know is that the world of computer programming looks a whole lot different to a non-computer programmer, like me.

With the display screen devices available for me back then the only futuristic change I heard people talking about were the new laptop computers which by-the-way, at that point in time, was still in my future. Today computer display screens can be found on jewelry, mobile phones, tablets thought by some to one-day make laptops go extinct. In the future who knows there may even be clothing or hats that can also display a webpage the possibilities boggles my mind anyway. Anyway, back on topic, if responsive design is the key to making my webpage content look good on any device understanding something about responsive website design will be beneficial, in my opinion.

So if you don’t have a website yet, responsive website design is definitely something you want to put on your new website checklist. If you already have a website that is already up and running without responsive website design, you might want to consider an overhaul of your website, either self-administered (done by you) or done professionally by an experience website builder you heir for the job. Having your website content able to be accessed and viewed favorable on all the different internet viewing platforms available now, and in the future, is a challenge that will keep your website user friendly in the eyes of the search engines, and your customers/clients.

The time is fast approaching when web design and responsive web design merge into the same thing, a website with responsiveness built in, so that in the future the responsive design question will no longer be an issue. For those of you who use WordPress you probably already know about the responsive website templates WordPress has to offer. I’m sure there are other examples besides WordPress but my experience has been with the WordPress website and blog templates.

If you chose to build your website from the ground up, a while ago, and are seriously thinking about not converting your non-responsive website to the more mobile friendly version, another important reason to reconsider is that Google (often referred to by me as the major search engine) now counts website responsiveness as a positive elevation factor in its rakings process. In other words: responsive website design is bumped up a little higher in Google’s rankings, compared to a non-responsive website design, because now-days more than half of internet traffic is mobile phone traffic, and responsive website design helps make your website mobile friendly.

So at the end of the day, or in this case the end of this article, how many of the website viewing platforms out there does your website respond well to? In my case I can say---most, and that I am working on making the answer to the responsive design question; all of my websites have responsive design. Because not only do I want to rank well in search engine land, I also want my website to be view favorable on Large, Medium, Small, and Micro screens.