» 2008 » November- tutorial blog

One of the nice things about WordPress is that it’s as friendly to search engine optimization as a beagle is to a bowl of ice cream–even before you start tweaking it.

Long ago, I settled on WP because I was more interested in using it as a simple content management system than an actual blog. All I really wanted to do is build a no-fuss place–comprising four or five pages–where I could showcase my work and experience to promote my Web writing business. I don’t really know how WP compares to other blogging platforms because I haven’t used any of the others.

In recent years, I’ve been paying more and more attention to SEO best practices. I quickly learned a while ago that Web writing and SEO were immutably tied and there’s really no way to separate the two skills. You need to be on your game with both skills or you’re never going to get the ball from the business players. Anyone who tells you differently  probably sells replica watches from the trunk of his car on the side.

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One of my favorite options inside Photoshop is clipping masks. Clipping masks can be used for a variety of reasons. They are used to place an image inside text, or to place an image inside a shape. Clipping masks can also be used to edit a selected portion of an image.

In this tutorial, we are going to use a Clipping Mask to place an image inside a shape.

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When you’re optimizing your site for Google and other search engines, images may not be everything, but you shouldn’t overlook them. According to Google, you can use Google Image Labeler and other tools “to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images.”

To opt in to enhanced image search:

1. Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account.
2. Click the URL for the site you want.
3. Click Tools, and then click Enable enhanced image search.

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When using CSS to style a website there are Three primary layout types available to web designers. This tutorial aims to arm you with the information you need to know to help make a more informed decision when choosing how to design your website projects.

The Options

The three primary layout styles for determining the width of websites — Fluid, Fixed and Elastic. All have their own merits. There are also drawbacks to these design patterns, so it’s important to know the best situation in which to use each type of layout. (more…)

Sales of laptop computers, especially the ultra-portables from Asus, Dell, HP and several other companies, are super hot these days and that has repercussions for Web writers and designers alike.

According to International Data Group, the sales of portable notebooks in the US–driven by several new companies in that segment of the business-outsold desktop computers for the first time in the history of computers in the third quarter of this year.

IDG says notebook computers accounted for 55 percent of computers sold in the US. That’s overall (consumers and small-medium-large companies).

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Symbols can potentially save you a lot of time. Illustrator comes with hundreds of symbols, and there are hundreds more available on the Internet. Before we discuss how to incorporate symbols into our illustrations, let’s define a symbol.

A symbol is an art object that can be used over and over. Each time a symbol is used within an Illustration, it is referred to as an instance of that symbol. An instance of a symbol can be added one-by-one, or can be sprayed onto an illustration via the Symbol Sprayer tool. And, since the original symbol is stored in the symbols panel, one can make a change to the original symbol and that change will be applied to all instances of that symbol. If you are a Flash user, and this is starting to sound very familiar, it is! The use of symbols in Flash is very similar to using symbols in Illustrator.

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There isn’t a journalist alive who doesn’t use the Web to develop story ideas, find breaking news, research feature articles and more. Here are some of the primary reasons a journalist might want to visit your site: (more…)

Preparing your document for print has become much easier over the past few years. Some printers now only require a high quality PDF file for printing. Others may still ask for the native file along with the fonts and images used in the document.

This article is going to take a closer look at the 2nd option. We’ll discuss the items to double-check and the files to include when sending your document for print. And, we’ll look at a few cleanup steps we want to do within the native file before declaring it truly “print-ready.” The more we follow these steps prior to printing, the more likely we can keep the relationship with our printer on the up-and-up.

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