The mistake this magazine, and others, had made is assuming WPS has anything to do with WPA(2), the underlying security mechanism of current wireless products. We all remember when WEP was so completely compromised that it made its use a polite gesture and little else. WPA(2) was a response to the weaknesses with WEP and the worry was that this too had become useless. Fret not! This is absolutely not the case. The vulnerability has nothing at all to do with the encryption methods employed by WPA(2).

So, just what is WPS then? For that matter what is WPA(2) and why do I keep adding a 2 in parenthesis? Here’s it is, the history of wireless security in one paragraph. When wireless first started to make inroads it was obvious pretty quickly that transmitting all your personal data in clear text out into the ether for anyone with a strong enough antenna to pick up was going to seriously limit its adoption so WEP was created. WEP stands for “Wired Equivalent Privacy”. The title ended up being ambitious to say the least. Research into WEP quickly revealed glaring faults that over the years has turned cracking WEP into a 5 minute or less endeavor. In response the IEEE (the standards body that defines networking protocols) started work on 802.11i which was then integrated into the 802.11-2007 standard. The important part of 802.11i (at least for our discussion) was the creation of RSNs (Robust Secure Networks). The problem was that the IEEE is not exactly known for their speed so we had this proposed standard that was going to take forever to get ratified and a seriously broken security protocol. This is where the Wi-Fi Alliance stepped in. You may have see Wi-Fi plastered all over your new wireless device. It’s important to note that the primary goal of the Wi-Fi Alliance is merely to certify products. They take the products produced by various companies and make sure they work the way those companies say they do and can all talk to each other. Well, the Wi-Fi Alliance looked at the 802.11i spec and created WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) as a stopgap measure until the standard could be ratified. When 802.11i finally did make it to a full fledged standard the Wi-Fi Alliance went back and created WPA2 to take advantage of all the aspects of 802.11i.

If these are all the security methods used with wireless then what is WPS? WPS stands for “Wi-Fi Protected Setup” and you’ve probably never heard of it because almost nobody actually uses it. The idea was that setting up routers and client computers could be difficult for even the most tech savvy of end user so what if they could make it simple enough for a 2 year old? There are 4 methods you can use with WPS: PIN, push button, NFC and USB. As it generally works you have a button on your router/access point and a button on your wireless card. You push the button on the router to initiate the protocol and and then push a button on the wireless card and everything is set up for you automagically. Now, I used the word “button” but it may not always be an actual physical button, it could be a software button you click. It’s not always practical to have a physical button, especially it laptops, cellphones and tablet devices.

The type of WPS that was found to be vulnerable lies on the PIN method. Basically the problem is PINs are short and WPS lets you try as often as you want without getting locked out. You should see where this is going. It was fairly trivial to create a program (Reaver) that lets you try every possible PIN and effectively bypass the security of the network. Reaver is pretty simple to use and several tutorials and videos have already been put together to show just how easy this flaw is to take advantage of.

So what’s our take away here? The underlying security mechanisms of today’s wireless networks, namely WPA(2), are as safe as they ever were. I also implied that while WPS is trivial to take advantage of it’s also rarely used. This is true… but it also doesn’t take one important piece of information into account. You don’t have to actually be using WPS for it to be turned on and thus exploitable. Unfortunately many consumer routers and access points ship with this “feature” enabled by default. To effectively secure your network just make sure WPS is turned off (assuming your hardware even supports it, it is optional after all). This process is usually as simple as going to the hardware’s management interface and changing a radio button from “yes” to “no” or “on” to “off” and saving the configuration. The problem here should be fairly obvious. The people using WPS were exactly the people that didn’t want to deal with the management interface to begin with. WPS was designed specifically to keep consumers out of that area and make everything as simple as possible.

So, is this security risk the end of the world? Clearly not, but it’s also not something that can just be ignored. As is often the case the reality lies somewhere in the middle.

1. Change your passwords often
2. Never use the same password in more than one location
3. Use complex passwords

Let’s break these down and address them individually.

1. Change your passwords often

What does this mean? It seems simple enough but what does “often” really mean? If you look at the Microsoft Live service they have an optional checkbox that would require you to change you password every 72 days. Some IT departments require you to change your password every 2 months. Some people have been using the same password for 10 years and don’t see any need to change. You may be wondering why this is important in the first place. If you’re following rule 2 you may be wondering why you need to change your password at all. Should someone figure out your password for a particular site it won’t effect anything else so what’s the big deal?

The reasons are two-fold. On the one hand just because a service was compromised doesn’t mean your password was… right away. Most places store your password in a cryptographic hash so that if their database is ever compromised the attacker still won’t have be able to log into your account and make changes. Hash functions are one way by design but they are still vulnerable to a number of attacks. Most commonly these are brute force and so-called “rainbow table” attacks. The attacker can load all the hashes into a program that will try every word in the dictionary, or every word found on wikipedia, or any number of permutations and amalgamations thereof. So the database may have been compromised in May of last  year but it took until now before they were able to crack the password and gain access to your site. On the other, the attacker may have access to your account but not do anything to let you know it. Perhaps they gained access to your e-mail account but don’t send out any e-mails or change your settings they just use it to send password resets forms from your bank for example. I tend to think 2 months or even 3 is a little paranoid but 6 is is a pretty good balance. At the least I would suggest changing passwords once a year.

2. Never use the same password in more than one location

This may seems obvious, but it’s amazing how many people pick one password and decide to use it for everything. Or maybe they have a handful that they switch between. The reason this is so important is because the reality is security breaches happen. Just look at the news this past year. A giant company like Sony faced millions of dollars in damages when the playstation network was compromised. If you were using the same password to log in and play your video games that you do to manage your bank just think about the consequences. You may be saying that there’s just too many sites now that you need to remember passwords for. I agree! There’s no way I could remember a unique password for every website and services I use. That’s why I use a password management solution which I’ll discuss in more detail at the end of this article. Even if you don’t use a robust password management solution there are tricks you can use to set unique passwords per site and still have them memorable. Let’s say your default password is “pass”. Highly secure, I know. One way you can create a unique password for facebook for example would be to use “fbook:pass” as your password. You can see I didn’t just use “facebookpass” or something like that. You don’t want to have a predictable method so that if someone gets your facebook password they can then figure out your hotmail password is “hotmailpas.” Exploring that concept our hotmail password might be “hotm-pass”.

3. Use complex passwords

This particular pillar of the password trinity has been under recent debate. Some security experts believe too much emphasis has been placed on “complex”. Complex has generally been defined as “a minimum of 8 characters including numbers an letters.” Some sources will also add a distinction between upper and lower case letters, and/or include special characters (i.e., $*@&). The real test of a passwords security is called its entropy. The debate can best be illustrated in this xkcd comic

So basically using “JKL@!*FJ$” for a password would be technically less secure than “turkeymexicopassword”. Of course I use the word technically with some qualifier. The entropy may be higher, but many brute force scripts have several options when dealing with wordlists. They can mangle the words or combine words so it could still be faster to crack. I personally like to go as crazy as possible. I stick with a minimum of 20 characters including upper and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. Of course, there’s no way I could remember all that which leads me into the last part of our discussion today:

Password management solutions

There’s several out there: KeePass, LastPass, PassPack and 1Password to name a few. You’ll notice I didn’t mention your browsers built in “remember password” feature. There are myriad security issues associated with using those “features” that I don’t have time to go into. Suffice it to say, don’t ever use them.  The obvious advantage of using a password management program is being able to set secure passwords for every site without having to worry about remembering anything. All of the options mentioned store the passwords in a cyrptographic vault that is unlocked with a master password so you still have to remember at least one password. It’s very important to make this as secure and memorable as possible. The last thing you want to do is finally set up all your sites to uses these fantastically complex passwords only to forget your password or resort to writing it on a post-it note stuck to your monitor completely defeating the point.  These solutions also have built in password generators that you can set to provide a random password of a specific length based on different options (Upper/lower letters, numbers, etc).

Here at Pro Web Marketing we use PassPack to manage our passwords largely because they make it easy to share the passwords without clients which is one of its main features. At home I personally use KeePass which is supported on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android) plus it’s open source. One of the perks of using KeePass is that it’s been around for awhile now and has just about everything you could want. You can organize your passwords into folders (Website, e-mail, etc.). The password generator has very specific options differentiating special characters further because some sites will let you use special characters just not spaces. It lets you set an expiration date, website URL and offers a section for notes. One of the things I’ve come across is that websites intentionally limit your passwords. My bank, of all places, has a 16 character limit on passwords so I keep that in the notes section to remind me when I update my passwords.

Keepass also has some nice features that work under the hood. You can set a “global hotkey” (default is ctrl+alt+a on windows) which allows you to set a custom hotkey that will automatically enter your login credentials on sites for you. It uses the title bar of the window and compares that against the title of the entry, because that doesn’t always work there’s also browser plugins to help you get the right match. If you still can’t manage to get it working for whatever reason you can pull up the keepass client, find the entry and hit “ctrl+v” just like you normally would to paste and it will automatically fill in the details in whatever window is directly behind it. By default the auto-type feature uses the pattern Username <tab> password, but suppose you need username <enter> password or username <tab><tab>password? Fear not you can set a custom auto-type in the notes section! Let’s say none of the above will work for some reason, as a last resort you can always open the client, highlight the entry you want and use the icons at the top to copy your username or password to the clipboard. The nice thing about that is even if you do use this feature the clipboard will be automatically cleared in 10seconds so you don’t accidentally paste your password in the IM with your friend. One last feature of keepass I’d like to highlight is that when you update a password it automatically creates a backup of the old password for you which can be a real life saver.

There you have it, with a fresh new year ahead of us you should really think about either switching to a password manager or updating the passwords in yours.

Visit Rose Remodeling – http://www.roseremodeling.com

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/07/13/wifi.hacking.neighbor.sentenced.wired/index.html?hpt=te_bn4

Traverse City
Frankfort
Empire
Elk Rapids
Leeland

Photo Credits (chronologically):

http://www.mealtickets.com/wp-content/gallery/downtown-traverse-city/traverse-city-aerial.jpg

http://meganleiter.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lighthouse.jpg

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRu14pGBVQDprik5QcxPq3JgV8r1TwNyRbcHkK8FwKVAe3QefcK

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTKuKEydAnLngU_lUZ5H7nk6MY7EMowfnviUbMztL_4cU97etRv

http://www.bing.com/travel/content/static/br-images/image-aHR0cDovL2JsdWJlZGJ1aWEwMTo4My9pLzdBLzQ0RkQxNzIxMzdCNUU2MkZERjMzRUVFRThDNEZCLmpwZw.jpg

Photo Source: http://appleipad2reviews.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/apple-ipad2.jpg

The site takes full advantage of the latest HTML5 and CSS3 features, promising a quicker load-time and more semantic code.

Check out the preview screenshot with example content

Sports Mitt is a Michigan-centered sports portal that covers all of Michigan’s sports teams – from Highschool football to Pistons Basketball!  The website is run entirely by its owner, Brad.  He manages the website from the Content Management System that we set up and modified specifically for his feature-rich website.  The site allows him to add players to his directory as well as manage polls, articles, events, sports scores, and even a small cart system to sell t-shirts for his charitable cause!

Check out his Michigan Sports Portal – www.sportsmitt.com

Who We Are:

CruznGreen strives to conserve water,eliminate contaminated run off, and protect our natural resources while offering the finest car care products in the world.

Check out their website today! cruzngreen.com

From their mission statement:

Yen Yoga and Fitness is committed to supporting and developing each student’s practices and well being through yoga, spinning and fitness emphasizing mind, body, spirit and joy, our mission is about supporting our community and fostering inspiration.

We developed a content management system for them, making it easy to update content on the fly.

Check out their website today! yenyogafitness.com

But what if you need to tell someone else that password, or perhaps log in on another computer?

Raymond.cc has a great solution to this problem. He has written a piece of JavaScript code that you can simply copy and paste into your browser’s address bar to reveal any hidden passwords on the page that may be saved.

Here’s the code!

Check out his blog at Raymond.cc for more info and instructions on usage.

This article discusses some simple things you can change on an old website without much effort or re-working of the HTML coding – ideal for situations where you don’t want to go for a full re-design but want to make some minor changes to improve your website’s appeal.

Background Images

The first easy switch that comes to mind is an updated background image.  Does your site have a plain color background?  You can really spice up a design by adding a gradient or texture to the background of the page overall – just make sure that it is congruent with the overall feel of the site!

Re-work Typography

Poorly thought-out (or rushed, as is usually the case) typography can cause a dated or otherwise unappealing look.  Put some thought into your fonts and heading styles and be sure to have ample line height.  By making everything more consistent from page to page and adding typographic contrast between headings and body text you will look your pages look cleaner.

Upgrade to CSS3!

New options in CSS3 make adding some pizazz to an old design easy.  Using new CSS3 styles like text-shadow, border radius, and more, you can add a layer of design precision to your websites that was previously only possible using images!

Use Brighter, Sharper Images

Using media and interface elements using higher quality images and more saturated colors in your design can bring a more modern look to your website.

Implement Sharing Tools

A truly easy upgrade for any website is adding a sharing tool, such as the Meebo Bar to the site.  While this doesn’t effect the design much, it does bring some modern functionality to the website with no coding required!

Font Squirrel’s @Font-Face Generator

@font-face was CSS’s original answer to the web-font question, but due to poor browser support and confusing implementation methods, it hasn’t yet taken off.  Font Squirrel’s generator, on the other hand, combines the @font-face declaration and uses a combination of javascript and CSS hacks to make it work in old, incompatible, and obscure browsers.

http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator

Typekit – A commercial approach

Typekit takes a new approach to web-fonts.  One of the forgotten (yet increasingly important) aspects of the web-font issue is the licensing.  With most solutions, designers use fonts online without thinking about licensing.  Typekit does all of that for you – at a cost.

Typekit is the first commercial model which hosts web fonts as a service.  Integration into your pages is supposed to be very easy and seamless.

http://typekit.com/

There are a few easy steps you can take to make sure your photos are appropriate for the web.

Consider where your photos are going

Most photos on the web are places in a gallery of some sort.  Galleries, particularly on the web, tend to be in a “wide” format.  This means that they are designed to hold “landscape” style photographs, rather than tall, “portrait” style photos.  By taking your pictures with this in mind, you can improve the look of the gallery by making your images consistent.

If your photos are for a certain area of your website, keep the shape of that area in mind!

Watch the background!

When taking photos to display publicly on the internet, be sure to remove all unrelated items or clutter from the background of the shot.  This will not only improve your photo aesthetically, but it will appear more professional and more thought out.

Do not scale or edit photos beforehand

Unless you are a professional photographer or have other interests in mind, leave that part to your web company.

Always turn off time stamps!

“Time stamps” are small text overlays on your photo that display the date and time that the photo was taken.  While these can be useful, they can potentially destroy a photo, as it cannot be removed once the photo has been taken!  Be sure to make sure your camera does not have time-stamping enabled.

Check out more tips

We have several more tips on photography that you can use in tandem with the advice in this article.  Check out more photography tips  from Pro Web Marketing!

An often overlooked aspect of daily work life is Ergonomics.  Ergonomics, by definition, means: “The applied science of equipment design, as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort.”

The very definition of the word should clue you in to how important it is.  By optimizing your computer workstation, you can avoid serious injury long-term and increase your overall productivity and comfort level.

Check out OSHA’s (Occupational Safety and Health Assosiation) guidelines and tips to make sure you aren’t doing harm to your most important assets – your employees and yourself!

In this article, I’ll provide a sample script that I have used and adapted for several galleries and other similar tasks. This article is meant for developers, but I will do my best to take as much of the “lingo” out of it as I can, and explain and document it well. Even if you don’t know programming or PHP at all, this should be a useful tool for you. I developed this with only a basic knowledge of PHP syntax and a bit of guess and check. Check out the example!

Robot work

If you are a web developer, you’ve probably been in this situation before, and this code snippet might look familiar:

<li><a href=”images/gallery/01/01.jpg” title=”Caption” rel=”lightbox”><img src=”images/gallery/01/thumbs/01.jpg” alt=”Click for Full Size” /></a></li>

For every image in your gallery, that line needs to be repeated, with the image source, link href, and caption changed. Sounds like a wrist-cramp in the making – definitely what I’d call “Robot work”.

A Scripted Solution

This situation just begs to be automated. Being a php enthusiast, I decided to embark on a small adventure – write a script that will produce this HTML automatically. Here it is, in all its simplistic glory (Pardon any coding faux pas – I am not the most experienced PHP developer in the world). This script is used with a lightbox gallery called “Sexy Light Box”. A grid of thumbnails which can be clicked on for larger view is our goal here.

<?php
$folder = 'images/gallery/';
$extension = '.jpg';
$group = '[group1]';
$caption = 'Caption';
$alt = '';
$title = '';
$iterations = 28;

$wrap1 = '<li><a href="';
$wrap2 = '" rel="sexylightbox';
$wrap3 = '" title="';
$wrap4 = '"><img src="';
$wrap5 = '" alt="';
$wrap6 = '" /></a></li>';
$i = 1;

while ($i <= $iterations) {
if ($i >= 10) {
$string = $wrap1 . $folder . "/" . $i . $extension . $wrap2 . $group . $wrap3 . $caption . $wrap4 . $folder . "/thumbs/" . $i . $extension . $wrap5 . $alt . $wrap6 . $title . $wrap7 . "\n";
} else {
$string = $wrap1 . $folder . "/" . "0" . $i . $extension . $wrap2 . $group . $wrap3 . $caption . $wrap4 . $folder . "/thumbs/" . "0" . $i . $extension . $wrap5 . $alt . $wrap6 . "\n";
}
echo ("$string");
$i++;
}
?>

The Breakdown

This script allows the developer to simply define the gallery directory, number of images, and an (optional – not included in this version) array of captions. Below I will explain the code line by line.

$folder = 'media/gallery';

Defines the folder in which the images are.

$extension = '.jpg';

Image extension. Currently the script requires that all images have the same filetype

$group = '[group1]';

Most lightbox scripts support “groups” or galleries – matching “rel” tags define your gallery

$caption = 'Caption';

Title tag of the linked full-size image. Most lightbox scripts use this as a caption.

$alt = '';

Alt tags for the images. This could be converted to an array if you are concerned about unique alt tags for your gallery thumbnails

$iterations = 28;

The number of images in the gallery.

$wrap1 - $wrap6

these are just the chopped parts of the HTML that is being created and wrapped around the variables.

while ($i <= $iterations) {

$i is a placeholder variable known as an “index”. It is increased by each time the while loop is completed. Once $i is greater to or equal than $iterations, the loops condition becomes false and it is no longer repeated

if ($i >= 10) {

This line is deals with the naming scheme of the images. I name my images 01.jpg, 02.jpg … instead of 1.jpg, 2.jpg etc. Because of this, I had to include a line that would add a “0” to the code IF the image number is less than 10.

$string = $wrap1 . $folder . "/" . $i . $extension . $wrap2 . $group . $wrap3 . $caption . $wrap4 . $folder . "/thumbs/" . $i . $extension . $wrap5 . $alt . $wrap6 . $title . $wrap7 . "\n"; }

This is the line where all of the HTML wraps and the variables you set earlier are combined. This version of the command includes the “0” I mentioned earlier. The final HTML that is about to be “echoed” is saved to the variable $string

else {

If the image number is 10 or above…

$string = $wrap1 . $folder . "/" . "0" . $i . $extension . $wrap2 . $group . $wrap3 . $caption . $wrap4 . $folder . "/thumbs/" . "0" . $i . $extension . $wrap5 . $alt . $wrap6 . "\n";

This familiar line of code has the same function as the previous “combiner” line. The only difference is that this one leaves out the 0, to avoid getting “010.jpg”.

echo ("$string");

This prints the first line of the gallery! Yay! The echo command takes our “$string” variable and prints it to our webpage.

$i++; }

The index variable $i is incremented, or increased by 1. This keeps our script from looping infinitely and lets it know when we’re out of images. Once the script hits this line, it goes back to the top of the “while” loop. If the initiating condition (“$i <= $iterations”) is true, the loop will run again, creating a new line for our gallery.

Simple enough?

This is a pretty basic script, and I’m sure it could be improved upon, but for now it definitely saves time, and is easily adapted to many purposes.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Adaptable, time saving, and simple. The script is re-usable several times on the same page if more than one gallery is on the page.

Cons: Slight server overhead which is probably negligible. Each time the page loads, the server has to generate that HTML. In my opinion, this hardly matters for such a small-scale site.

Wrapping Up

Thanks for checking out this script. I hope you’ve learned something from it!

You can download the example code HERE.

To learn more about the javascript used to make the gallery fancy, check out Sexy Light Box – compatible with jQuery AND mootools.

Free clipart

http://www.webweaver.nu/clipart/

Web Generator

http://www.ornj.net/webalbum/

Free Photo Gallery Generator

There are several programs to choose from at this link

http://www.web-album-maker.com/

Free CSS templates (Which we do not use)

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/

Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a website with what I consider one of the best examples of flash interface design.  Grooveshark is easy to use and search, and find what you want.

Link: grooveshark.com

Pros:

• Easy to use and navigation
• Looks great, and you can change your themes
• Good selection of content

Cons:

• “Radio” function is not great
• Manual playlists are more or less necessary
• Quality and seamlessness of playback are not constant

Playlist

Playlist.com became popular by allowing users to embed a playlist on any website, including their MySpace profiles.  It’s functionality is limited, in that it has no radio feature, but it is still useful

Link: playlist.com

Pros:

• Simple.  Search and play or add to a list.
• Good integration with social networking

Cons:

• No radio function.  Requires manual playlists
• Quality and seamlessness of playback are not constant
• Content selection is mostly user-provided – links can break

Pandora

Pandora is the “biggest and baddest”  online radio service.  It is the most controlled, but provides the most “professional” experience, in my opinion.

Link: pandora.com

Pros:

• Fantastic radio feature.  Uses complex algorithms to play music that you will like.
• Wide selection – Create a radio station based on any band or song

Cons:

• Extremely limited – You may only skip a few songs an hour
• No play-on-demand.  You can only listen to radio stations
• 40 hour per month limit – You have to pay for the premium service for unlimited listing.

Conclusion

I prefer Pandora.  As someone who works long days, I can’t spend time making playlists and switching songs every minute.  Grooveshark has potential, but it needs to improve the radio functionality substantially before it can replace Pandora.

• Is the hosting company reputable and well known?  For example, Godaddy has been around a few years and has a good reputation for great customer service and a wealth of different hosting packages to choose from.  Try to avoid third-party small time hosting services because they just may decide not to continue the service and this could leave you stranded, unable to edit your web site or transfer your existing domain.
• Does the hosting service have a package that is right for you?  Consider what it is you are going to have hosted on your web site.  For example, if you are going to provide lengthy video, you will need to choose a package that has a high rate of bandwith and lots of hosting space.  If you are hosting a simple 5 page text with a few pictures web site, you will only need to purchase a package with a small amount of space.
• The best hosting service you can choose is one provided by your web designer.  You can most likely trust the designer of your web site to provide you with the right amount of web space for your site and great service.

• Keywords
• URL Text
• Description, Meta tags
• Title tags
• Image Names
• ALT tags
• Heading tags
• Content
• Hyperlinks

The focus of these 8 steps is to load your pages with as many “keywords” as possible.

Keywords
Keywords are the most important aspect of good SEO, this is where you tell the Search Engines what your site is about. Search Engines use an algorithm to determine the “Keyword Density” of your site, this formula is:

Total Words ÷ Keywords= Keyword Density

Use this formula on your competitors web site and see how they score, then aim to beat that score.

Choose keywords that best relate to the information, products or services that you are offering. For instance, if I am designing a site about “Web Design”, I want my site to include the words “Web Design” as many times as possible.

However, most people don’t just search for just one word, they type phrases, so you should consider the phrases that best suit your sites target market. For example, if I am creating a site about “Web Design” in New Orleans, I would include “New Orleans web design” in my keywords. Another way around this is to not separate my keywords with commas, just use spaces, and the Search Engines will make the phrases for you. The most important thing to remember is that the content of each page is different, so only use keywords pertaining to that page.

URL Text
When you name a new page you have the option to call it anything you could possibly think of, why not se a keyword? After all, the URL address is the first things a search engine comes across when indexing your pages. You have to remember content doesn’t come easy to everyone, so you gotta slip in your keywords when the process gives you an easy one.

Description Meta tags
These tags are dwindling in importance since Search Engines are now looking at content, but every little bit counts.

Optimize your meta tags to match your content, products, and services, and the Search Engines that still look at meta data will reward your efforts.

Title Tags
Title tags are the tags that tell the Search Engine the title, or formal description of the document or page. This is the word or phrase that is seen at the top of the browser window. The most important rule about title tags is, don’t put anything in the title tags but keywords. Once again this is an easy time to slip in your keywords, so don’t miss out.

Image Names
As I said before, content doesn’t come easy to everyone, so slip in your keywords whenever possible, this applies to image names. If you are saving a picture of a guy working on a computer for your web design web site, don’t call it “some_dude.jpg”, call it “web_site_design.jpg”. The Search engine will look at the code for the site and see the image pertains to the content of the site and this will be another relevant element on that particular page. You have to take the easy ones when you are given a chance.

ALT tags
Alt tags are keywords that you can attach to images, giving more weight to the image since Search Engines can’t analyze the content of the image itself. Here is a chance to slip in more keywords without writing great content, use it.

Heading tags
Heading tags are associated with the bold font that leads into a section of text. Like this:

Web Design
Web Design Inc. offers custom web site designs…

Your heading tags should only be keywords, and should be presented in the order that your Meta tags follow.

H1= first meta tag, H2= second meta tag…

Try to utilize all 6 heading tags on each page to ensure maximum page optimization.

Content
As every expert will tell you, “Content is King.” Each web page should have at least 350 words on it, and the more the better, but keep in mind the formula for keyword density. You don’t want to fill a page with 1500 words of jibba-jabba and only 5 keywords in it. Some people get hung-up on how browsers display text, and use images with text in them because they want a cool font, but browsers can’t read the text embedded in images, so this content ads no weight to the page in a Search Engines eyes.

Linkbaiting is the new trend among high ranking sites. Linkbaiting means writing quality content, or articles that other web sites can display on their pages as long as they give credit, and a link to your site.

You don’t have to be a vi or emac expert to write good web content, just be thoughtful of how you word things and incorporate your keywords.

Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks are text links to other pages on your site. The rules of SEO and hyperlinks are easy:

• Use hyperlinks so the Search Engine will have a text link to follow to the next page
• Don’t use one word links, use long link phrases, preferably keyword phrases
• Use bullets, or some sort of small image that you can attach an ALT tag to, this will ad more importance to the link, and throw in a couple of free keywords for you.

Keep these 9 aspects in mid when designing a site, and you are sure to have a leg up on the competition.

Murry Daniels

It seems to be the next generation of iphone. I give kudos to apple for introducing the iphone and ipod first, getting consumers accustom to using the interactive touch functionality. It now only makes sense to come out with a hybrid like the ipad. If you don’t like to lug around a bulky laptop or hate using a small device like the iphone, the ipad is just the ticket. This device not only has the functionality of a phone, laptop and computer but as also can be used by all walks of life including professionals, students and the general public.

Can you believe the price point!? Starting out at $499! The basic iPad models will cost $499, $599 and $699, depending on the storage size. Those 3G (for the phone)  iPad models will cost more — $629, $729 and $829, depending on the amount of memory — and will be out in April.

We will probably wait to purchase the second generation model to allow them to work out all the hardware and software bugs. Although Apple always seems to offer very stable, secure products from the onset. Being a business professional, the the ipad will be a great compliment to our day to day business.

Look forward to the ipad being available to the public in March 2010!

What does this mean for developers?

The new documentation is so thorough that anyone should be able to make simple scripts, even with minimal programming knowledge.  Every function is documented, complete with code snippets, examples, and common questions and answers.

There are also new functions that allow very simple manipulation of HTML elements – allowing for very easy presentational JavaScript.  These new functions simplify previously difficult actions.

Check it out today!

http://api.jquery.com/

http://jquery14.com/day-01/jquery-14

• Use a Tripod or something equivalent to assist you
• Set the camera to aperture mode (if available)
• Set the aperture to either 8 or more
• Set the camera ISO (if available) to lowest possible setting (ex:100) / Turn off AUTO ISO (if available)
• Turn off Image Stabilization (if available) for either lens/body or both
• Set the camera to timer “optional”
• Take the shot!

Always remember what you see on the camera screen is not always perfect, transfer the photographs to the computer to see the REAL results.

Before you read further, please remember that it is not important to follow the steps. Every person has his own way to do things. These are some helpful tips which may be useful to you too.

1. Attractive: Many beginners make the mistake of writing a lot of matter on the homepage. Try and avoid doing this. Put a good sales page instead and tell the customers about your products you want to sell. Give them links to the inner pages of your website. Make the homepage interesting. Get to the point straight and tell customers all good things about your store. Make it attractive by putting images on it.

2. Simple: Make your online stores simple. Do not confuse your customers. Google is a successful website because it has a very simple homepage. Follow it. It will help you a lot.

3. Try spreading it: Tip number one is difficult to follow because of lack in text. The search engines are unable to pick your website because the search engines are unable to read videos and images. Search engines can only read text. Put up text, but just make sure that they are not in a one single place. Spread the text out in different web pages. This tip is very useful and has helped many online stores.

4. See where you want to go: This is very important to make your online store successful. Make sure that you do your research well before you start. This works if you do not want to land up in a overcrowded place where everyone is promoting the same things. Make sure your eyes are open. Also make sure that you are not in a place where there is no else offering the same products.

5. Relax: This is the last tip. Relax and do things and do not over go it if you want to grow. Never force your customers to buy. Advertisements are important, but try not to overdo it.

These are some important tips which helps in e-commerce and will help you to make your online store and successful one.

Innovative and curious as the developers are Pro Web Marketing are, we’ve found several alternatives that can avoid the downsides of traditional solutions.

Fahrner Image Replacement

Fahrner Image Replacement is a technique that was originally thought up by Todd Fahrner, but it is simple and obvious enough that many other designers and developers have thought of it on their own (Us included!)  The idea is that you may use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to “Hide” the heading, and superimpose the graphic version of that text over it.  This is good for basic header replacement, but it requires a lot of manual work.   The text is also impossible to “copy” for an end-user, which is bad for accessibility.

…Read more about FIR

(Scalable) Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR)

sIFR is a technique which uses Adobe’s Flash Player to replace text with a dynamic flash layer automatically.  It utilizes Flash, JavaScript, and CSS to create what is probably the most full-featured option to show your fonts in their full glory.  The only downsides?  It is a real pain to set up, and it requires that your users have a modern version of the flash player.  It can also cause havoc on slower PCs!

…Read more about sIFR

Cufon – My personal favorite!

Cufon is a project designed to replace sIFR.  It uses JavaScript and a custom “Generator” to create a script directly from your font.  All you have to do is generate the script, include it, and deploy it at specified selector tags (headings, etc).

Cufon works in all major browsers and does not interfere with any text interaction such as copying and pasting, and even allows for perfect search engine spidering.

Check it out here

Looking to the future – CSS3 and Modern Browsers

CSS3 includes the “@font-face” property as part of its specification.  This will allow developers to specify which font they want to use by uploading a copy of it to their server.  The code will work like this:

@font-face {
  font-family: <a-remote-font-name>;
  src: <source> [,<source>]*;
  [font-weight: <weight>];
  [font-style: <style>];
}

Once all major browser vendors have implemented this into their specification, this technique will become more popular.  Learn more about the spec here.

Conclusion

Using non-standard fonts still requires a bit of extra work at this point, and all of these techniques should only be used sparingly.  Your pages main body text should still be a web-standard font, for most cases.

Northern Granite Website

We are wrapping up a new website for Northern Granite. Located in Northern Michigan, Northern Granite leads the way in great products and services in the tabletop industry. We chose a great color palette the suit type of company they are. We kept it earthy and also fresh vibrant. keep a look out for the live site in the next few weeks.

Look for www.concretecentralinc.com to launch in the next few weeks!

Concrete Central Inc

Branding a product or services is solely done with the aim of how others will recognize and distinguish your business or services and the other major factor in branding is to develop goodwill in the market. Proper branding ensures that your customer base will remain intact and you will start getting word of mouth publicity, this is the ultimate form of advertising and branding. One of the main reasons why big company’s have become so huge is because they have had a very clear cut marketing and branding strategies and over and above this they have delivered on what they had promised (last part is also very important in case you want credibility in the market).

Branding done by Xerox or IBM is generally termed as B2B branding/ marketing. They spend a lot of money on branding and advertising, and vice versa, just to ensure that the companies, clients and customers perceive them fit and sound, both in terms of their products as well as their services. In case of online businesses all you need to do is make sure that you have an attractive logo and your content (on the web page/ website) is designed keeping the branding perspective in mind.

To start with you have to pin point the main and important values that your online business promises to offer. In case you have a web-designing site then you should mainly concentrate on the creativity and innovative aspect (this should be your first priority) and of course you should be professional enough to convey to your clients that they will get their money’s worth in case they approach you and your company. This is where your branding (of your website) starts taking shape.

Your logo, content of your web page and the design or layout of the page should convey what all you can provide to your potential clients, all this has to be done in a very professional way. Building a brand is like gaining somebody’s trust hence you have to ensure that you deliver on all your promises, this is of utmost importance. Once you ensure that these things are in place and you can deliver as per your promises your online business will soon see the vertical graph as far as the growth of your business is concerned. You can plan to start your online business from the comfort of your home but never compromise on the quality and promises that you make.

1. Communication: This is very important before starting a project and laying out all the correct information in the beginning will help things go much quicker. Also convey aspects of the project that you just don”t want to see or thing you do want to see. If you know something specific you want then let the designer know. They will also consult you on why or why not that is a good idea or not. Also be sure to describe the whole project before hand.
2. Invest In An Expert: Let them do exactly what you paid them to do. Give them time to figure out the best solution to your needs. A good designer will be upfront and let you know the time it will take to do the project. If the time is surprising, don”t worry it”s for a good reason. They will call you with questions and or concerns in the process.
3. Do You Have A Budget: Of course you do, so stick with that and lay it out on the table to the designer. When doing this you give the designer the information to decide what will be needed for the project and how to cut costs. Any good designer can work with a budget and still be able to design a great end product. If something comes up for an extra costs; yes this does happen so please don”t be surprised, they will let you know about it.
4. Let The Professional Do The Work: Let them give you options of what they know will be the best solution. If you don”t like something then communicate that to them as best you can.
5. Be Organized: This will also save time which can also save money. Be organized with your information. If you have photos you want to incorporate, then categorize them into folder by name. This leaves out time that the designer will need to organize them himself when they don”t know anything about your image.

After taking these initial steps to starting your next design project with a professional this will sure be a productive investment to saving money long term and creating some great work.

• Clip Art Designs
• Cookie Cutter Marks
• Limited Color Options
• No Creative Control
• Same Logo That Competitor Has

These are just some of the factors. Designers are creative people that know advanced software inside and out so that they can get out of their heads onto a digital art board their creative ideas. They go to design school, take color theory and print production classes. Create a their own creative process for dealing with problems like print time demands and money limitations. They are experience and know what color scheme and logo marks will work best for a businesses brand.

In the industry of design you get what you pay for and if you need to invest wisely in someone who is an expert in their field of work and can create something for your businesses needs that is visually compelling and jaw dropping. Doing this will help an owner save money in the long run and be able to generate a larger clientele with a long lasting, time tested design.

Video Marketing
It has become very easy to embed video, and they are relatively easy to make. Videos give a touch of class, can be viewed in seconds, and cover the same amount of information as an hour’s writing.

Social Media
Although you will need to work to build strong, permanent relationships, social sites cannot be beaten for free traffic. You will receive, in return for the work you put in, a much focussed stream of customers, all very relevant to your business.

Article marketing
The backbone of any marketing strategy, and always will be in some form. It stands to reason that a well written article full of pertinent information will sell a product and build trust with readers. Article directories give a further dimension. They allow your article to be picked up and posted to somebody else’s site giving free links and traffic from elsewhere. This tactic will help you build traffic and increase search engine rankings.

Forums
Links are not allowed on many forums today, an effort to combat spam. Some do, though, and as long as the posts are useful and informative, a link can usually be added in a signature. As long as you do not start spamming, trust can be built relatively easy as you piggyback the trust the reader already has with the forum, which in turn allows you to build trust with them.

Blog Commenting
Pick good quality blogs that fit within your sales niche. Be intelligent about the whole thing: ask questions, build relationships with other readers.

Email Marketing
Every email address you pick up in the course of your marketing efforts should be logged. Each time somebody visits your website, get the email address there too. Don’t be pushy about it, remain businesslike. Once you have a good list, you can promote your products again and again. Do not over-promote, however, a good relationship is far more important. Inform potential customers how they can solve their need with your product. Remember, also, that they may well refer your website to their own contacts, invaluable business.

PPC Advertising
A very popular method, pay-per-click advertising can lose you money in the short-term but could prove a real money-spinner in the long-term. It is possible to spend lots on this method, so you need to keep a tight rein on what you spend. It may take time, but once your PPC campaign is up and running, it could prove to be extremely profitable.

Viral Reports and EBooks
Spend some time writing reports and eBooks. They should be filled with good quality content, not with a profusion of links. Allow as many people as you can to pass them around. As long as they are filled with great quality, useful information, people will be happy to do so. A truly successful report or eBook will not need to be pushed around. It all comes back to building relationships: if you produce great content, customers will want to give you their business. As long as the links you do add are only of the very useful kind, people will still have a route to your website. Best practice is to place the most important link in the footer so it appears on every page.

Guest Writing
Always be open to writing posts for other people’s blogs. This takes a bit of research as you will have to find several, say 10-20, people with blogs that fall within your niche. The main emphasis should be with those blogs that receive good traffic, not necessarily the biggest. Simply ask them if they want a free article post, build up the trust until you can ask them if you can post a couple of quality links within the post you write. Long-term, guest writing will allow your own website to become more well-known, always good.

SEO
Search engine optimization will always be one of the most important tactics you will use in marketing your website. In excess of 80% of all internet traffic uses a major search engine. Good links to your website are, therefore, crucial. Your long-term goal here is to get a good search engine results page (SERPS) ranking, and to get your website to move up these rankings constantly.

Good quality marketing should be in your sights from the first day you set up your website. All marketing should be top quality. Never spam as this will alienate people that could possibly give you business. Worse, every person you alienate could be someone that could come back to you again and again.
Relationships, therefore, are a crucial key for any marketing strategy. Really good customers will refer your website on, also.

Keep content informative and ensure quality is sufficient that it will keep a potential customer reading, hopefully all the way to a purchase.

Finally, it is imperative that your website is easy to reach. Whether through SEO and SERPS rankings, or through other forms of advertising such as guest writings, forums and blogs, the more links there are anywhere on the internet, the more chance of pulling in a potential customer.

Well whatever the reason may be this season on the hunt or lack of hunting, I think it’s safe to say that regardless of economy and lack of snow the first week of the season the hunting will continue on.

So with all that being said lets talk a moment about good Typography practices. Every web page or design needs to first start with a clear a readable font. I mean readable especially at smaller text sizes. When you have smaller text your height or “x-height” as we call it needs to be higher and also the space between the letters needs to be a bit larger. Ok now for contrast and why we thrive on it. It is important to keep in mind that you should switch it up and have different types of fonts in a design to generate interest and a personality. But don’t go crazy with this idea because some fonts can just as easily resist each other. But also having them very similar will not create enough contrast which can make for a weak design. So I recommend keeping it simple and fun. Sans serif fonts are great for heading areas to display call to action for posters, flyers, business cards and many other print work. These sans serif fonts can be read easily when larger in size and the letters are closer together. Serif fonts are better for body copy and smaller heading areas. Hope this information helps with any of your Typography questions.

Look for www.hertlerconstruction.com to launch in the next few weeks!

Hertler Constructions Website

Visit www.creativestonedesignsinc.com to view the site!!

Creative Stone Designs Website

Here is a free web-based tool that does just that.  It is called ‘Add This’ and can be seen here at this web site:

http://www.addthis.com/

You pick the options you want and the site will automatically generate the HTML code needed. You simply copy/paste this this code and place it on your Web site or with-in the template of your blog.

If you are not exactly sure where to place the code, contact a friend that has basic HTML skills and they can help you. It should only take about 15 mins.

Now when someone wants to share an interesting blog post or page on your web site, they simply click on the icon that they have an account with. For example, if someone has a Facebook account, they click on the Facebook icon, login to there Facebook account, and they post a brief mention of your content. This generates more exposure for your site and is a great way to get traffic. It basically allows other people to promote your web site and blog, for no cost!

The other benefit of this tool is that once a person posts a mention of your content on there social networking account, it creates what is called a ‘back link’. A back link is simply a link on a web site that links to your web site. The more back links that you have from sites that have relevant, similar content, the better. Google and other search engines put a decent amount of weight on how many quality back links you have. Basically the more quality back links, the more important you site must be in the eyes of the search engines.

So if your looking for a free, easy to use tool that allows others to share and promote your site, then I would highly recommend using this service.