Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else

I've had a couple of emails asking me where I'm going with the small business articles I've been writing, well the image to the left is a preview of a new template I'm developing specifically for small business owners who want a professional looking website and blog all in one. I'm not ready to release the template yet, but the grey colorset is only one of four. I won't tell you what the other colors are yet, you might have to wait a few days.

Small business owners take note, you don't need to pay many hundreds or even thousands of dollars for your website. Registering your domain name and setting up a webhost account needn't send you into the abyss, the problem is understanding the jargon used by IT professionals.

I've advised a lot of small business owners over the years, mostly about managing their business successfully and effectively growing revenue. I've met a lot of very astute entrepreneurs whose business is highly geared for profit, but when it comes to domain names, webhosting and starting a website, the lingo used by this industry is baffling and webdesigners have a vested interest in keeping it this way.

So, if you're a small (or even mid-sized) business owner, where do you begin? You need a domain name. Read More

Many new template designers have great ideas, and are often very capable at creating layouts in Photoshop. Unfortunately if they don't know html, the image slice and export to webpage function of Photoshop will simply create a page filled with nested tables that are hard to read and even harder to convert to a blogging engine like Serendipity or Blogger.

In this article I'm going to focus on creating a simple two column css only template which any Serendipity or Blogger template designer can customise for their own template.

Let's start with the assumption that the template will have a header area, and beneath that will be a container holding a content column and a sidebar which could either be on the left or right, and then at the bottom of the page we'll include a footer for the copyright and credits. Read More

With the upcoming release of Serendipity version 1.0, hopefully to be quickly followed by version 1.1, I thought it might be time to start showcasing some the better looking Serendipity blogs I've seen online, and invite the very best of Serendipity blog owners to make a comment and add their blog to the list. See what you think of some of these desgns;

Coriolistic Anachronisms, a photographer and passionate Vancouver resident. This site sets some very high standards in blog design and really showcases what can be done with Serendipity.

DHTML Nirvana, a very clever looking site that extends Serendipity through the use of DHTML, check out the menu on the left side and the color control used.

Laura Lore, a lady whose blog I have yet to fully understand, not being able to work out if she's serious or having us on, anyway she's produced a stunning template for her Serendipity blog and is well worth seeing. BTW, Laura and I share a passion for coffee, although I wonder how my 18-20 cups a day compares.

This is 1024px, an open source HTML tremplate designed by Andreas Viklund. 1024px is my first, but by no means last template for Blogger, and whilst it looks very simple, its actually a very graceful template to use. The main attributes of this theme are its size, which is very small so should load quickly. It also features a gradient background image around the main wrapper.

In response to a comment from DimaS, switching the columns around is really easy. You need to edit you template and add three characters only, so don't be shy, give it a go. Find the lines

<!-- Begin content -->
<div id="content">

and replace with this

<!-- Begin content -->
<div id="contentalt">


I plan to continue developing this template, so input from blogspot users would be very welcome. A demo and instructions for using the template has been created. Download 1024px for Blogger.

I love getting feedback from people who are new to computers or the Internet, and who appreciate my articles. The other day a real world coaching client of mine had a problem with their computer and some really bizarre things started happening. We needed to get his computer working so we could work on his business plan, so we had no option other than to try and get rid of all the rubbish he'd downloaded and then use an anti-virus program to clean his system.

After we'd solved enough of the problems to make his machine work again, I looked him square in the eye and said something really dramatic like "You really need to learn a little bit more about computers!". Yeah, I know, you were expecting something really profound or witty weren't you?

I believe the problem with computers is the very thing that makes them so valuable, their flexibility. Because they are so flexible, and so easy to install extra software on, nasty people find it very easy to damage the naive person's computer by tricking them into running viruses or spy programs. Personally I learned a long time ago that I would never again allow email onto my computer, I only use webmail, at least I never need to worry about viruses or spyware from just opening an email.

My client and I spent some time hunting around the web for information that new computer users could access before they have problems and came across the Newbie Club where these things are talked about in 'newbie speak' instead of 'tech speak'.

If you're a blogger or webmaster its fairly certain you'll need to edit stylesheets at some point.

If you're editing an html template, or perhaps a Wordpress or Serendipity theme, you'll be looking for a file that has a .css extension, in Serendipity and Wordpress you're looking for style.css

In many stylesheets the first line you see might begin '/*', for example,

/* Theme by Carl */

which tells you this is a comment and isn't used by your browser. Comments are handy for making notes in stylesheets and are never seen on your webpage. Read More

Branding your small business website is the most important step to take if you want your small business website to be a success, and it needn't be terribly difficult to do.

Many small business owners become frustrated with developing their business website, budgets are always tight and developers always want to charge more, the business owner is often very successful yet is treated with disrespect by marketers who have a point to prove, and then to cap it off, they lose control of the end result because they don't understand what is possible.

I've always thought the biggest challenge to small business owners getting an effective website up and running was the branding. Many business owners don't actually have any branding, they rely on word of mouth or local advertising and price points to win customers. Very few would own a brand that commands loyalty, in fact many are only agents for a successful brand.

Every business needs a distinctive profile, and whilst your website might be just one part of your overall marketing, it should be remembered that your online business can be very different from your traditional business. So if you're a small business owner, how do you position your web presence to effectively promote your business? Read More