Tag Archives: world gator

Infographic: 5-Finger Internet Discount

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Hosting

The post Infographic: 5-Finger Internet Discount appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . It’s been said: “if it’s free, it’s for me; I’ll have three!”  When speaking of free things on the Internet, it’s most often a conversation about stealing media; mp3s, movies, and other copyrighted materials.  However, there are some legitimately free and legal things for you to help yourself to online.  Presenting The 5-Finger Internet Discount: 5-Finger Internet Discount via HostGator Register a cheap domain name at HostGator.com Continue reading →

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5 Great Books On Web Design That You Need To Read

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Hosting

The post 5 Great Books On Web Design That You Need To Read appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . Web design is challenging stuff. There’s a reason that talented and well-read individuals can make impressive sums of money with a little HTML and CSS know-how. But everyone had to start somewhere and properly educating yourself is the first step to honing these skills. Myriad tutorials and forums exist that can help make sense of markup and formatting language, but the breadth of information required to create attractive and usable websites demands the touch of experts. These resources may not be free, but valuable information rarely is. Furthermore, the capabilities of print to flexibly and graphically represent the trickier aspects of coding are worth the investment in order to build a foundation of knowledge that will pay for itself in time. From the copious volumes of web design information, we’ve selected five gems that are sure to put you on solid footing and get you coding with confidence.   HTML&CSS Building attractive websites demands an attractive resource. Jon Duckett’s comprehensive volume builds the essential skills needed to create your first website, with the added benefit of some truly beautiful and informative graphic design. Aside from the aesthetic appeal of its pages, the tome holds thorough explanations of web basics and advanced CSS functionality. The true value of this book lies in a creative and considerate application of visual and textual elements. The benefit of online tutorials is that they can actively demonstrate the effects of syntax on a working page. However, their instructional capabilities are limited to the technical acumen of the instructors coding the lessons. In this way, a printed volume of well crafted, textual explanations reinforced by visual aids can help enlighten key concepts in ways that online tutorial simply cannot.   Don’t Make Me Think But learning to construct web pages is only half the battle. With appropriate markup and formatting knowledge, one can create gorgeous, utterly unusable pages that benefit no one. That’s where Steve Krug’s user experience guide comes into play. By examining the process of human interaction with web pages, nascent designers can understand the essential elements of usability and function. In teaching these concepts, Krug takes a unique and valuable approach. Instead of simply delineating UX best practices, he teaches readers to think like a usability expert, in order to guide future development efforts and inform functional solutions. In addition, the guide is short, engaging, and extremely digestible, bucking the unfortunate reputation of educational texts as dry, sleep-inducing slogs. By teaching a process in a digestible way, the book helps demystify our relationship with the Internet to great effect.   Responsive Web Design If you’ve paid any attention to the progression of web design in the past couple years, you know that responsiveness is in. The solution, which endeavors to design versatile configurations that address complicated and ever-changing platform concerns, has taken root in large and small-scale web development alike. For this reason, any rudimentary education in web design necessarily includes at least a cursory look at adaptive and responsive layouts. Ethan Marcotte’s 150-page crash course in this web design revolution will give you the information you need to jump on the wagon. The book examines key aspects of adaptive layouts including a look at how to adjust media, text sizes, and arrangements of elements in order to accommodate mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Since whatever you craft will likely be seen on each of these platforms at some point, it behooves you to consider everyone’s needs when creating your masterpiece.   The Smashing Book Smashing’s reputation as an authority of design knowledge precedes itself. Their website houses droves of professionally curated techniques, code, and ideas with the express intent of making you a better designer. But their greatest contribution to the annals of design history is a massive regular publication containing all the latest developments and information an aspiring web designer needs. The Smashing Book’s true value exists in its authors’ abilities to turn sophisticated design concepts into actionable takeaways. Recent articles run the gamut from predictions on the future of web typography to the logistics of content strategy. With this resource in your office, you can assure that your skills keep up with the rapid pace of development; an essential consideration for any successful web designer.   Mobile First The cell phone has become as much a part of our society as khakis and hotdogs. But to the chagrin of web designers, this transition necessitates some special accommodation in order to fit small screens and finger-based interfaces. Furthermore, the commercial potential of mobile adaptation is immense, rendering an education in mobile a designer’s obligation. Now that our knowledge of the platform has reached critical mass, Luke Wroblewski’s paperback guide represents an essential piece of any web designer’s library. The former Yahoo! design architect packs each page full of data-driven strategies and time-tested techniques to making your mobile site the best it can possibly be. With an entertaining voice and a concise format, readers will find themselves privy to some of the most important design information of our modern age without facing the trudge of dry academic reading. As the body of web design knowledge continues to grow, these volumes may, time, fade into the distance. But for the current wave of technologies, each book listed here contributes essential knowledge and skills that will put your web design on solid ground. From attractive and understandable explanations to yearly updates on important design developments, your bookshelf and your brainchild will both benefit from these handy references. What other books have you found helpful? Add the titles in the comments section below! Register a cheap domain name at HostGator.com Continue reading →

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Online Photo and Video Sharing Is Expanding: What Does It Mean For Your Business

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Hosting

The post Online Photo and Video Sharing Is Expanding: What Does It Mean For Your Business appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . With burgeoning volumes of content on social networks and websites, content has reached a point where less user friendly, empathetic, and compelling fare will see a precipitous drop-off. The fact is, media-full users simply do not have time in their days to consume everything presented to them. For that reason, discerning viewers have developed attitudes toward media that allow them to quickly determine what matters to them and what does not. High on the list of “what matters” is visual media. The trend makes sense: in a world where time is media, quickly digested pictures and videos hold a special advantage over text in their ability to communicate meaning, emotion, and more without the “arduous” task of reading. So what does this mean for you? It means that video and photo is the “it” channel for conveying brand message, and any effort that can be made to accommodate this trend is well worth your time and energy.   What’s Behind the Trend? When one considers the ubiquity of cellphone cameras in today’s society, it is not hard to understand why photos and videos rose to the top. With the availability of recording tools, more adults than ever are uploading original photos and videos. In addition, high-resolution screens and readily available wireless Internet access have made viewing online photos and videos a breeze. The specific content of these items follow measurable trends. According to a  Pew Research Center study , the top three types of video consumed include humor, educational, and instructional, with music at a close fourth. Video created primarily includes everyday activities, people doing humorous things, and pets. According to another  study by the Pew Center , the demographics sharing and consuming this media include 18-29 year old, college-educated individuals. What fuels the consumption of content, however, is not simply the format itself. The rise of social networking, including platforms designed specifically for video and photo sharing, have hasted the spread of visual formats. According to the Pew study above, 66% of online adults use Facebook, 12% use Pinterest, and 12% use Instagram. Specifically, as many as 20% of women use Pinterest and 27% of 18-29 year olds use Instagram. The ease and penetration of these platforms have made video and photo sharing an easy and engaging endeavor.   Video While all this data is well and good, you’re probably wondering how this affects your business (after all, it was in the title of the article). First and foremost, understand that if you are not using video in your marketing, you should be. According to  a study by Reel SEO , 93% of marketers are using video in their campaigns with 82% reporting positive results from doing so. In addition to the hard numbers, video presents a real opportunity to enrich and engage your customers. As an institution of authority, tap into the how-to and educational crowd. Businesses would do well to introduce content that leans on their specific area of expertise and delivers valuable, informative content to viewers. Sites that sell shaving products can afford-ably create a web series about proper shaving technique.  Cooking ware companies can release videos detailing basic cooking techniques that use their products. Identify what expertise you possess and use it to engage your customers in a way that focuses on delivering value. Furthermore, avoid any pandering and know what your audience wants. Creating video for video sake is just as likely to appear desperate, as it is to help sales. Content should be genuine and enriching. Furthermore, know your audience, either through direct communication, polling, or surveys of comments on content, and base subsequent videos on the response.   Photos Images pose another opportunity altogether. Simplifying the content experience, photos can be readily shared and consumed by peers in a way that builds online identity. According to a study by the  Content Marketing Institute , images that possess characteristics with which viewers want to be identified are more likely to see shares on social networking and, in the process, build positive brand association. Know your goal when developing images. Infographics, for example, provide the same opportunity to deliver value that videos do, but in a way that is more digestible and less time consuming. Non-branded images incorporating your company’s products have shown to improve overall brand perception. Branded content based on memes and humor is likely to see shares, currying positive feelings toward your organization. In either instance, identify what you want to accomplish, and tailor your content on that basis.   Sharing Regardless of the content you produce, do not ignore the need to share. Unless you’ve invented the next Google or Facebook, it is unlikely that your site alone will draw enough visitors to maximize your content’s potential. Use the obvious channels, Twitter and Facebook, and don’t be afraid to embrace newer channels with demonstrated user-bases like Instagram and Pinterest. Your goal should be for a “> 1″ return on social media views: focus on shares and spreading content. In doing so, you give your brand the opportunity to become a part of the cultural zeitgeist, and that’s marketing no money can buy. With no signs of slowing down, video and photos have become a powerful component of any successful marketing strategy. Tap into your intellectual resources and share that asset with the community in videos. Base photography on brand goals and use social networking to its fullest potential. Check out the fast WordPress blog hosting by HostGator.com Continue reading →

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Mobile Websites: What Are Your Options?

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Hosting

The post Mobile Websites: What Are Your Options? appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . Mobile Internet has desktop usage in its crosshairs. According to  Smart Insights , mobile Internet will surpass desktop usage in 2014. This is good news for Apple and Android, but bad news for all those hard-working web developers who painstakingly created a desktop website worth its salt. But let’s be honest, in an age when innovation moves at light-speed, no one expects a silver bullet solution to last very long. The unique characteristics of mobile devices require special considerations all their own. Smaller screen resolutions and unique interfaces present challenges to the typical 1280 by 720 click-and-type model. Because of smaller resolutions and tactile, gesture-based controls, navigations, layouts, and content need to be simplified for proper viewing. To further complicate matters, the diversity of mobile devices means that a single resolution or interface solution may not display correctly on other devices or platforms. Fortunately, there are options, each one with its own challenges and assets, to help solve this truly complicated puzzle.   Mobile Specific Websites The first potential solution is a bit of an antique at this point, but has its benefits. The mobile specific website builds a dedicated set of code and assets around the unique context of mobile web. This option can allow for coding of mobile specific capabilities and features, but ultimately the cons largely outweigh the pros. The first issue is load times. The mobile Internet is fast and responsive. The mobile only website is not. Because the mobile specific code is necessarily housed under a separate URL, a series of redirects based on the detected platform are needed to point phone browsers in the right direction. This dramatically increases load times and, should any of the redirects fail, unnecessary and unappreciated pain in access. The next problem is consistency. Updating code on one version of the site requires updating of code on the other site, and failure to do so can lead to embarrassing and glaring issues in format and content. In addition, successful execution of two separate code bases complicates the already arduous design process in the case of implementation of additional features. This is without mentioning the manpower needed to police both versions and maintain a coherent web experience. The final problem is search engine optimization. Because of the separate URLs of the two sites, the indexing and search rank of one does not benefit the other. For this reason, mobile users may not even be able to find your mobile site should they look for it. The short story is: don’t use a separate mobile site. At one time, Google  actually recommended them  before responsive web design practices became prevalent. Save yourself the headache and consider more flexible, intuitive, and convenient options.   Device Specific HTML Device specific HTML represents one of these intuitive solutions. The backbone of this approach is the  Vary HTTP header . In its implementation, the Vary command signals to Internet Service Providers to consider the encoding preferences of the user when determining which format to serve. In doing so, two sets of HTML code can be utilized with some common assets and displayed based on the needs of the user. In addition, the shared URL of the two versions has positive search implications. Common indexation and search rank of both versions means that the appropriate format will be readily accessible through regular search channels, thus alleviating the confusion presented by a stand-alone solution. Furthermore, the Vary header helps Google more easily crawl both formats by indicating which Googlebot to use. The end result is faster crawl and site discovery.   Responsive Web Design With myriad platforms and devices, even device specific HTML is no guarantee that site presentation will be consistent. For that reason, web designers have adopted a solution entitled “ responsive web design “. The method adopts a doctrine referred to as “device agnosticism”, which aspires to create a homogeneous experience regardless of the specific viewing context. On a coding level, a series of queries enable websites to actively adapt to different device circumstances. Javascript media checks apply assets and layouts on the basis of screen resolution and can therefore be used to simply rearrange page content and navigation without the hassle of separate HTML. By relying on viewing characteristics instead of operating systems or devices, HTML can be rendered accurately in spite of changes in software or hardware. On a practical level, this means a more coherent experience for viewers and less frustration for web developers. By utilizing common assets, fonts, and layouts, platform agnosticism permits cross-platform branding and design that plays a strong part in developing brand association. By applying catchall code, updating one asset updates the asset across all contexts, thus saving manpower and embarrassing inconsistencies. Between these options, you should have be able to make an informed decision regarding what is best for your businesses specific needs. Consider your available manpower and aspirin when accepting the headaches of each method and employ the best advantages of each when constructing your web experience. In time, your users will appreciate your mobile accommodations and your mobile site will become as much a part of your identity as your sterling reputation and charming demeanor. Check out the fast WordPress blog hosting by HostGator.com Continue reading →

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Five Steps To Building Your Dream Website

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Hosting

The post Five Steps To Building Your Dream Website appeared first on HostGator Web Hosting Blog | Gator Crossing . There once was a time when only the IT elite had their own websites. Now? Mittens the cat has a webpage with 70,000 unique viewers per month. This is not, however, without good reason. Websites afford the opportunity to make your name, your product, and your words as accessible as humanly possible. Combined with the powerful Internet search indexes that fuel Google and Yahoo, potential customers are now just a quick search query away from discovering your quality wares. But the process is not as simple as choosing the right font and page background. A number of factors contribute to making your website the best it can possibly be.   1. Know Your Budget Building a website begins, and ends, with the least fun step: budgeting. Web hosting , premium features, and additional bandwidth can come sometimes at a premium, so knowing what you are willing to spend to make your website great is the first step. Consider what you can reasonably spend on a website, what you need, and, just as importantly, what you do not need. Building a great website is not about the biggest and best, but what is most appropriate for your company. As obvious as it may sound, it bares articulating that larger websites with more ambitious goals require a much greater budget. Facebook, for example, spends more than the annual revenue of most companies on server capacity to keep its service running at full speed. More modest sites, however, may only need a $10/month subscription fee for storage of product images and the necessary dues for server load from incoming viewers.   2. Make Your Wish List One could argue that this is the first step in the process. When building your website, it’s important to determine what you want to include on your website, and how you want it to function. Are you a small business? Perhaps contact information and inquiry forms are enough. Selling a wide selection of products on your site? An organized tree of product pages, up-to-date pictures, and pricing information will be your priority. Know your market and tailor your wish list to their needs. Your website should do no more, nor any less than what the customer needs to quickly and painlessly find the information they seek and complete the transaction with your business. Avoid popular traps like social media feeds and cluttered backgrounds. Features like this may seem cool in the lab, but deploying them in the real world for online visitors with short attention spans and a penchant for distraction can prove detrimental.   3. Design Your Website This step may only occupy one slot on this list, but the process is important enough to merit three. Good web design is essential to a painless user experience and there exists copious information to guide you in your efforts.  Hack Design , for example, possesses expert-curated articles about design on all sorts of topics that can help make the experience a little less daunting. Another method is to take note of attractive websites and mirror their good practices. Based on your response to step 1, professional web design may be worth the money. The fact is that good design has demonstrable potential in improving your bottom line. Good design practices affect not only the shopping experience, but also the mood of visitors. Since the steep price premium of good design is not accessible to all businesses, consider your priorities and your budget and evaluate whether or not professional web design is a viable and useful option for you. Do not step away from the web design canvas without considering how your website appears in search engine indexes. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a realm of study with volumes of research to its name but knowing a few basics can make a big difference. Focus on keywords that best describe your business and brand and consider gleaning further insight once the site goes live from services like  Google Analytics .   4. Choose a Great Domain Name As our knowledge of how the characteristics of web pages affect consumers changes, so too do our practices. It once was thought that a domain name was simply a sign; that “Bob’s Towing” would suffice. However, it is now understood that a web domain performs multiple tasks when viewed by online visitors, including setting expectations, improving accessibility, and building a brand. It is important to keep in mind that most good domain names are, for better-or-worse, owned. As a result, domain name companies are making a mint from charging a premium for good domain names. Despite this, purchasing a well-crafted and impactful domain name is worth the money. Your domain is your storefront on search engines and, just like a physical storefront, a fresh coat of paint will pay for itself many times over.   5. Keep it Updated Once the site of your dreams is set up, plan on performing routine maintenance to keep it ”the site of your dreams”. Consider any time you’ve shopped at a site with outdated information, pricing, or item descriptions. Were you happy? What did this do for your trust in the organization? Did you complete your transaction and, if you did, did you come back to the cobweb riddled vendor? Consumer trust is greatly influenced by the integrity of your new digital storefront. Run a regular spot-check and update/delete old information. Check pricing and keep it updated, removing old products that are no longer offered. Keep contact information current to avoid any lost emails or missed connections, and occasionally update your website. Brand image must be reflected by your website and no one wants to shop at an establishment where the storekeeper has left the shelves un-dusted. Congratulations! You’ve officially built your dream website, minus the work to get there. Creating your digital hub is all about evaluating your needs and designing its functionality around those needs. Be prepared to invest both time and money in the project and when it’s finished, step back and bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. Check out the fast shared web hosting by HostGator.com Continue reading →

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