w3sights

Many websites, personal blogs to Wikipedia, are blacked out today, JANUARY 18, 2012, to protest proposed U.S. legislation that threatens internet freedom: the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Last day of 24 Ways – the advent calendar for web geeks. Each day throughout December a daily dose of web design and development goodness is published to bring those who like this sort of thing a little Christmas cheer. It’s a blog I look forward to reading each year…. and that I go to throughout the year.

I’m often asked – What exactly is RSS?

So, here’s the answer – RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. More recent browsers support RSS subscription. Otherwise, you can use an RSS reader, such as Google Reader. View this engaging video by commoncraft for an explanation of what exactly an RSS Feed is.

Now that you know what RSS is, you can probably see why EVERY website should have an RSS feed – it makes it easy for everyone to share your content! And sharing your content is what you want — to ultimately drive more traffic to your site.

Contact Helen @ w3sights.com if you need help creating an RSS feed for your site.

‘United Breaks Guitars’ is an example, albeit from over two years ago, of the power of social media. If you don’t know the story – United Airlines passenger Dave Carroll had his guitar, happened to be a Taylor guitar, broken by the airline’s baggage handlers during a flight. When he repeatedly contacted United aobut this, they repeatedly declined to reimburse him for the damage. He then wrote a now-famous song and video decrying their customer service and their brand. The YouTube video was posted on July 6, 2009. It amassed 150,000 views within one day, prompting United to contact Carroll saying it hoped to right the wrong. I just saw on Youtube that the video has gotten over 10 million views now. It’s a good example of how powerful social media can be in spreading a message and in impacting business, whether it’s your business or someone else’s business.

What? You can’t remember the name of your mother’s maiden’s pet? Log In by Christoph Niemann. To see more great pieces, go to www.christophniemann.com

If you’ve got a web site with a lot of images, as artists do, how can search engines read those images? Here are some techniques for optimizing image based web sites from Matt Cutts, at Google. w3sights would be happy to implement these techniques for you on your web site!

Want to learn more about Cloud Hosting? Here’s a good web site – Cloud Hosting HQ. And here’s a good video. Both explain what cloud hosting is in easy to understand language. Cloud Hosting HQ identifies the top or best cloud hosting companies and has reviews.

One of the first things you will see when you have a web site is that it looks different from browser to browser, computer to computer. Colors appear darker on PCs then they do on Macs. Depending on individual settings and displays, your web site can spread across the screen on one computer and take up a little space on another. Look at your web site on as many different computers – old and new, Mac and PC, and using as many different browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and even the new Chrome, as possible. That’s what I do! You will then be familiar with the range of differences and be able to make specific requests.

A few weeks ago The Lakeville Journal, my local newspaper, had an article about a Sharon CT resident and photographer, Jenny Hansell, who has a Photo a Day blog. I immediately went to Jenny’s blog, sharonctdailyphoto.blogspot.com, and enjoyed looking at her photos, all taken down the road from me; and then I went to a few of the other blogs linked to from hers and literally discovered a world of daily photo blogs!

Jenny started her blog on March 30, 2007, a little less than a year ago, and how she started it is revealed in both the article and on the Sharon Historical Society web site: “Hansell’s quest to explore Sharon in photographs began with a love affair with a very different place: Paris. While impatiently awaiting her departure on a 9-day trip to the City of Light, she discovered a website that provided her with a daily dose of Paris beauty: Parisdailyphoto.blogspot.com. With the inevitable letdown following her return, Hansell returned to the Paris photoblog, and soon noticed that other “daily photo” blogs were cropping up, all linked to the Paris blog. As Hansell notes in her artist statement, “I didn’t have to think twice: if Barcelona and Venice could have a photoblog, so could Sharon.”

For those of you in this area, the Sharon Historical Society has an exhibit of Jenny’s favorite photographs from the blog, “The Sharon Landscape: Selections from Sharon Daily Photo”, running through March 28th. Also, on Sunday, March 2nd, at 3 pm Jenny is giving an illustrated talk on her photos and her experience as a photoblogger.

I wanted the web sight for Block Island Yoga to draw visitors in. I also wanted it to be a soothing experience. I had a lot to work with. Sue Littlefield, who has taught yoga year round on Block Island for 11 years and incorporates yoga and body-mind therapy into her private counseling practice, provided me with the meditative words which became the home page, highlighted ones are links to pages in the site. She also provided the beautiful images which are used throughout the site. I came up with a page layout for Sue to view and she wrote back to me: "I like it very much. I like the simplicity of it. I like the color, the balance, the white text……..Go for it!" And so Block Island Yoga was online shortly thereafter and just in time for the release of Sue’s Yoga CD, Tidal Flow.

Tidal Flow can be purchased online at Block Island Yoga. Sue recognized that it would be helpful for some people to have visuals of the yoga poses and so once you have the cd you can go back to Block Island Yoga and view photographs of the poses referred to on the CD. At Block Island Yoga you can also join the email list, read Sue’s Bio, and check the current schedule of yoga classes.