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What not to do to your Blog design

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There are some things that I just dislike coming across when I visit a blog or website. Does your site have or do any of these things?

  1. Autoplay video
  2. Autoplay music
  3. flashy buttons
  4. too many buttons (put them in a roll up menu if you must have them)
  5. advertisements that take up the whole header area making me scroll to see the actual header and posts below.
  6. Too many advertisements – don’t do the max google adsense – you actually make less money from them if you do too many!!! Plus it turns off your visitors.
  7. Pages with so many plug ins, large file size images, buttons etc that make the page really slow to load- or worse cause it to freeze when loading.
  8. Text that is hard to read – white on black doesn’t work if you are trying to read a long post – light gray text works better … same for florescent coloured text on black or white backgrounds, or neon backgrounds with black or white text.
  9. no paragraphs -makes posts very hard to read
  10. Set your posts so that only 5 or 10 display on the main page!!!! Not everything you’ve ever written on your blog for the last two years!

Tips!

Use roll up menus in your sidebars if you have lots of buttons or blogrolls etc. It really makes the page look so much tidier.

Test your blog design in Firefox, Internet explorer, Opera and Netscape – all easy to download and have on your computer. Make sure your site loads correctly and works well in all the browsers listed above,

Also look at your site on different computers. Text and background colour might look great on your monitor but really really bad on 5 other computer monitors that you test it on.

As I said in the last point- visitors only need to see your last 5 or 10 posts when they load your page. If you have more than that showing your page will load very slowly.

Same with categories and archives. Do your visitors need to see your archives dating back to 2001? That’s a long list taking up valuable blog sidebar real estate. Use a roll up menu or modify the code in your page so that only 5 or 10 archives and or categories are viewed. You could also create a page just for your archives and link to it from the main page of your site.

Every once in a while ask your readers their opinion on your page. Ask for constructive criticism. If the majority of your readers state they don’t like something or that your page loads slowly – do something about it.




Got a health or fitness blog?

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Last June a market research, well maybe it’s better to call them a Buzz Marketing company, got in touch with me and offered me a free Nokia smart multi-media phone.

All I had to do to get the phone was answer a survey a few months later, and just openly talk about the phone to people I encountered or on my blog. I could say whatever I wanted – whether I loved it or hated. The company was just trying to generate some buzz for Nokia and for the particular cell phone model.

I do like the phone btw, it’s a Nokia 6682. I’m still using it. Free is good. It always is!

Now, this same company has contacted me again.

They’d like to get in touch with people in the Toronto or Montreal area. If you have a health related blog where you discuss health matters, nutrition, weight loss etc and you live in Toronto or Montreal let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the company.

This is specifically what my contact is looking for:

I’m currently working on an interesting word of mouth marketing programme that involves a health food product, and I’m interested in speaking with individuals who are enthusiastic about fitness, eating well, and pursuing a healthy and active life style – and who host a blog on any of these topics.

Specifically, I’m looking for people who:

· are 25-54 years old
· live in Toronto or Montreal
· are actively pursuing a healthy lifestyle
· are very socially active and engaged within peer (personal and professional) social circles
· Prone to spreading new health information to friends and/or clients
· Host a blog that focuses on fitness and activity, healthy living, or nutrition

If you fall into this category let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the marketing coordinator.

Use Movavi Video Converter to convert your video files

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If you enjoy making your own videos whether it’s with your camera phone, your digital camera, a digital camcorder or a tape based recorder you know that each piece of equipment might save your video or movie files in a different format. I know that’s the case between my cell phone camera/video recorder and my digital camera video recorder! Same thing if you are trying to convert DVD or VHS files too.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a software program that you could use that would easily convert all the different video formats easily and quickly? Well there is! It’s called the Movavi video converter. It’s a powerful software program that lets you convert video files to different formats in minutes.

You can use the Video Converter to convert any video format, and also use it to rip DVDs. With this program you can save the video files that you’ve made onto DVDs, Ipods, Zune, PSP, PDA’s and cellphones.

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You can use the Video Converter program to convert between any of the following formats: VCD, SVCD, H.263, H.264, RM, WAV, MP3, FLV, AVI, DivX, XviD, MP4, Sony PSP, Apple iPod, DVD, VOB, IFO, MPEG 1,2,4, WMV, ASF, 3GP, 3GP2, and MOV file formats. I think that covers just about all of the most commonly used video formats out there!

You can also use the Video Converter to merge separate video files into one video file, or convert any video file segment. The software also allows you to extract audio and frames from your movie.

The software supports multipleprocessors and is Vista compatible.

The video converter software program only costs $29.95 if you are purchasing it for personal use. As far as I’m concerned a program that does as much as this one does is well worth that price. Check it out!

Need to upgrade memory

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I’m trying to help a friend increase the memory in her Dell laptop computer. What she really needs to do is purchase some Dell Memory modules to either add on to her system or to replace the current memory that’s there.

The online store that I linked to above sells the Dell Memory that she needs, but the shipping charge to Canada is fairly high, especially with border duty, and since upgrading memory for a laptop computer is not all that cheap we’d like to purchase the memory components in Canada.

I guess it could either be an online store, or a store somewhere in Southern Ontario. We don’t care which … we just need to find out where to get the laptop memory that she needs in the very near future. Her laptop is an older model so she figures if she can upgrade the memory and make it work a bit better and faster she might be able to live with the computer for a little while longer while she saves up for a new one.

Does anyone know of a good computer memory seller in Canada?

One way to lessen the spam on your blog

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I’ve always had Akismet activated on our WordPress blogs, and we do get a fair amount of comments. However, in February I also added Bad Behavior to our sites because the amount of spam Akismet was catching was getting out of hand. I was easily getting 400 spam comments on some sites!

That’s a lot of spam to go through to find a real comment or two!

I still find that anyone who leaves a link or two in their comment often ends up having their comment go to the spam folder. I hate that, you’d think that if I approved their comments once or twice in the past both WordPress and Akismet would learn and not put the post in the spam folder. I even increased the amount of links allowed in a comment on one of my sites because I run several blogrolls out of that site and it still puts the comments with one or two links in it in spam.

As I was saying, in February, I downloaded Bad Behavior, and it actually hides the site from some bad bots so the amount of Spam hitting our sites dropped dramatically.

Yes we still get spam, but it’s down to at most 10 spam per day on the busiest sites, and often only one or none on some days. It’s great … 400 spam a day down to 1 to 10? I love it!

So if you are sick of dealing with spam download the Bad Behavior plugin, install it in your WordPress plugin folder and then activate the plugin. That’s all you have to do. It works along side Akismet without any problems.

Titanic Museum

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I was just reading on MSNBC that there’s a new museum called the Titanic Museum in Branson Missouri. This new museum is expected to increase tourism in Branson, to the point that they are expecting well over 7 million visitors this year.

The museum is the worlds largest Titanic Museum and considering that the Titanic was probably the most technologically advanced ship of it’s kind in it’s time I’m sure technology buffs will be heading to the museum to check out the 100 foot tall building built to resemble the actual Titanic.

The entrance is through a mock iceberg tip that juts out of the ship’s side. Inside, visitors take a 90-minute walk past more than 400 artifacts and reconstructions of the ship and the life stories of many of its passengers.

Check it out if you are ever in Branson!

Have you seen the new solar house markers?

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solarhousemarker.jpg Chris and I went shopping over the weekend – mainly to stores like Home Depot and garden centers to get supplies for our garden.

I always tend to stop and look at the lighting section in places like Home Depot and stores that sell specialty lighting. I love solar lights. They look so nice in the garden, and the technology has advanced quite a bit.

The first solar products we bought 6 years ago didn’t really last that long. Well, we still have them, but we have to replace the rechargeable batteries much more often than in some of the solar products that we’ve purchased in the last three years.

One thing that I’ve noticed when looking at the various solar lighting and other products is that they now have a solar house marker. Actually I think there’s a few different brands.

Some of them are quite nice, such as the type that I’ve displayed above. Others can be set on the ground or perhaps a porch step and look more like a rock with house numbers on them.

What do you think of Solar house markers? Would you buy one?

Recover files that you’ve accidently deleted

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file-recovery-logo.gif I almost decided to call this post “Oops I did it again”. Why? Well, I know some people who constantly have problems with their computers. I spend hours with them either online, on the phone or visiting their homes fixing their computer for them. Days or weeks later I inevitably get a call from them saying “Remember that problem I had a few days ago? Well it happened again.”.

The problems that I fix most often are due to opening email that contains a virus or downloading a program that contains a virus. If these people would get decent anti-virus protection perhaps I wouldn’t waste so much time helping them!

The viruses they get on their computer end up either deleting files that their system needs to work properly or corrupts the files. What’s worse is that sometimes the people I try to help try to fix the problem themselves and not really knowing what they are doing they end up deleting important files as well.

That’s why I’m so happy that there’s a new program called Active File Recovery. You can use the program to restore files that have been accidentally deleted or that have been deleted or altered by a virus attack. It will even help restore files that have been lost when your system crashes or that are lost when the power fails.

It’s easy and safe to use. The program is definitely a reliable and efficient data recovery tool. I’m planning on purchasing a copy of this program myself, and you can bet I’ll be urging the people who’s computers I fix regularly to get a copy of this software too!

One great thing about this software is that if you suddenly find that you can’t boot up your computer you can use the CD/DVD ISO image that comes with the Active file Recovery Enterprise Installation. You can burn a copy in order to get a bootable CD or DVD with a lightweight version of Windows Vista that will run in RAM. Once you are able to boot your computer with the disk that you made you can then use the Active file Recovery software to recovery important files that might have been deleted and that might have caused the crash.

With this program you’ll also be able to perform Partition recovery. So if you have had a partition loss or the partitions been damaged by formatting you can repair it using Active File Recovery professional. The program can also be used to recover media files such as photos, deleted files from flash memory, and data that’s been lost or formatted from memory cards.

You can download a demo version of the Active file recovery software if you’d like to check it out, or you can simply purchase one of three packages – Standard, Professional or the Enterprise package that are priced from $29.95 to $99. Corporate licenses are also available. All of these products include free updates and technical support.

Trying to plan our vacation

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Chris and I have been trying to decide where to go for a summer vacation.

In fact, when Chris goes to work this morning he’s going to check on how much vacation time is available to him and if he can he’ll take off at least one week in July.

I used to go on traveling road trips with my parents. Even Chris came along for one of them when we took my parents out East in ’99. We’ve actually been thinking of taking a trip to the Outer Banks in Carolina.

I’ve actually been to almost every State but I don’t believe I’ve ever been to Carolina. That’s one of the reasons we’d like to go there. Have you been there? Did you enjoy your vacation?

Computer trouble? Try 866GeekNeed.com

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I think I just found the service that I’m going to be refering some of my friends and relatives to! It’s called 866GeekNeed.com. The company provides phone based tech support.

They can help you with any of your computer related problems over the phone. It does cost $1.99 a minute after the first three minutes, so if you have a problem I’d be prepared when you call.

Looking at their site it seems that they are experienced in dealing with all types of computer, software, hardware and computer accessory (printers, scanners) type problems. Naturally the most common types of problems that people need help with are virus removal, spyware removal, email support, and connectivity trouble.

Techs from 866GeekNeed.com are available to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Give them a try if you have a problem that you can’t figure out.

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