Just when you think the web industry could not pull out any more acronyms, we come up with SMO... humanly referred to as Social Media Optimisation.

Where the hugely mainstream Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the act of generating traffic to your websites through search engines like Google, Social Media Optimisation is basically the act of generating traffic for your website through social media applications like Facebook and Blogs.

In some ways, SEO and SMO are intertwined.

Effectively increasing your website's social media reputation will also catch the attention of search engines, which notice traffic increases from more popular websites to less popular websites (e.g. from Facebook to your website).

Therefore SMO helps you increase search engine traffic, while sending you some valuable and new non-search engine traffic.

Some ways to optimise your website through social media are:

• Blogging: Your blog can be broadcast to a great number of websites which accept blog broadcasts, or 'pinging'.
  
  
• Allow Sharing: Using SHARE buttons (see below this article), your visitors are able to share your blogs, articles, products, etc. with their social media networks (Facebook friends, Del.icio.us bookmarks, etc.)
  
  
• Allow RSS: Really Simple Syndication allows visitors to subscribe to your content (blog, news, etc.) so they receive notification of anything new so they return to your website for more reading.
  
  
• Multimedia Sharing: Broadcast your videos and images on popular websites such as YouTube and Flickr, tagging the right keywords and referencing your website in any public descriptions.

There are many other ways of course... but we can't give all out secrets away!

It could be because of the recession. Or maybe inspirational 'overnight internet millionaire' stories. Or just plain luck. Whatever it is, it is undeniably evident for those in my industry that there is a significant rise in the number of 'internet entrepreneurs' taking a plunge with an online idea.

Among the services we provide at KayWeb, we act as internet business consultants for clients and potential clients with ideas they hope will be 'as big as Google' or 'as big as Facebook'. The enquiries by this brand of internet services consumer have increased 10-fold over the last six months.

When we covered this story in our news section last week, I shared my theory that the reason for this rise is most likely the recession. I mean, many professionals are either out of work or looking over their shoulders for when their number will be up in their organisation.

This sort of uncertainty gets people thinking about where they are at and where they want to be.

Obviously, most are realising there are less job opportunities around with unemployment on the rise, and thus desiring to be in charge of their own destiny.

Starting up a business offline - like in retail, cafe, etc. - requires a lot of capital investment, and in this economic climate where governments feel the need to fill up family coffers to encourage festive spending, is not a very safe business investment.

Starting online... the overheads are far lower, and while the risks are high, the opportunities are also greater as the market for anything online is the entire world of internet users. In Australia alone, there are 14million users of the internet.

An internet start-up that is innovative can go a very long way.

Let's take Facebook as an example. Facebook was designed to have a few people within Harvard University network with one another and maintain contact when they have graduated. Within months, the vast majority of the campus had signed up. It then stretched throughout other universities in Boston, then across the United States. Now... forget universities... Facebook has over 175million users.

I will be sharing inspirational stories like this to engage the minds of our budding 'internet entrepreneurs' in coming weeks. I will also provide tips on what to look out for when starting a business online, as the potential pitfalls are plenty in this highly competitive industry.

We all know Facebook has captured the attention of internet users. In fact, this interesting social networking giant has encouraged the handful of people who hadn't yet dabbled with the net to jump on and 'network'.

Facebook currently has 175 million registered users, who log in and view things others in their network decide to share - including photos, videos and dialogue with others they are connected to.

Among the successes of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his team of tech geeks have been their ability to educate the masses on certain web technologies. We web developers and marketers have been trying to add the acronym 'app', short for WEB APPLICATION (aka web software), into the dictionaries of public and business for many years now, and Facebook has managed to do this seamlessly.

By offering interesting applications, from games to useful tools, to their users, Facebook has brought this 'app' term to the fore.

The beauty of Facebook's set-up for developers and entrepreuners is that it is open source. This means that developers like us can develop apps and earn fame by promoting it to Facebook users. What Zuckerberg and Facebook gain from this is they keep developers with smart ideas using their platform rather than encouraging them to create their own and potentially compete with the social networking website, which began as a way to get Harvard campus students communicating online, and hasn't stopped growing since.

We at KayWeb have been receiving a growing number of requests from people who want to develop Facebook Applications (Facebook Apps). Some just have good ideas and aren't interested in the potential financial rewards, but most are businesses who are trying to take advantage of the interactivity Facebook provides by developing an application that could provide the gateway between the social folk on Facebook and the products/services their businesses provide.

In the last month, KayWeb has received 18 proposal requests for Facebook Applications for businesses, and this list will continue to grow!

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to be used in HTML and XHTML respectively. It can also be used in XML.

Uses

CSS can be used to define colors, fonts, layout, and other aspects of document presentation in a web page. It is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control presentation characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. CSS also allows authors to move much of that information to a separatestylesheet resulting in considerably simpler HTML markup.

Sources

How to Insert a Style Sheet

When a browser reads a style sheet, it will format the document according to it. There are three ways of inserting a style sheet:

External Style Sheet

An external style sheet is ideal when the style is applied to many pages. With an external style sheet, you can change the look of an entire Web site by changing one file. Each page must link to the style sheet using the tag. The tag goes inside the head section:

href="mystyle.css" />

Internal Style Sheet

An internal style sheet should be used when a single document has a unique style. You define internal styles in the head section by using the

Inline Styles

An inline style loses many of the advantages of style sheets by mixing content with presentation. Use this method sparingly, such as when a style is to be applied to a single occurrence of an element. To use inline styles you use the style attribute in the relevant tag. The style attribute can contain any CSS property. The example shows how to change the color and the left margin of a paragraph:

This is a paragraph

Multiple Style Sheets

If some properties have been set for the same selector in different style sheets, the values will be inherited from the more specific style sheet. For example, an external style sheet has these properties for the h3 selector:

h3
{
color: red;
text-align: left;
font-size: 8pt
}

Syntax

The CSS syntax is made up of three parts: a selector, a property and a value:

selector {property: value}

The selector is normally the HTML element/tag you wish to define, the property is the attribute you wish to change, and each property can take a value. The property and value are separated by a colon, and surrounded by curly braces:

body {color: black}

To make the style definitions more readable, you can describe one property on each line, like this:

p
{
text-align: center;
color: black;
font-family: arial
}

You can group selectors. Separate each selector with a comma. In the example below we have grouped all the header elements. All header elements will be displayed in green text color:

h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6
{
color: green
}

With the class selector you can define different styles for the same type of HTML element. Say that you would like to have two types of paragraphs in your document: one right-aligned paragraph, and one center-aligned paragraph. Here is how you can do it with styles:

p.right {text-align: right}
p.center {text-align: center}

You can also define styles for HTML elements with the id selector. The id selector is defined as a #. The style rule below will match the element that has an id attribute with a value of "green":

#green {color: green}

A full definition of CSS can be found here.

CSS bug fixing

This is one of the things that a good web designer has to go through each time he or she codes a page using CSS for layout. Following Web Standards is the way to go and it should be an obvious choice when you take your job serious. Today I want to share some of my thinking process and the steps I usually go through when I'm at this phase of the
process. But before jumping on the bandwagon to fix things consider these criteria...

Make sure your markup is well structured

Make sure your markup is well structured, in other words use the appropriate markup for the appropriate content. Use headings for titles, paragraphs for blocks of text, ordered and unordered lists to sum things up in list form or for your navigation, fieldsets in combination with legend and label elements for forms... Last but not least, use tables only for
what they're meant for, tabular data.

Fixing for IE

Ok, your code is well structured and your page validates. The page looks fine in browsers that follow the standards like Firefox and Safari, but you still need to fix a few things for IE. How do you proceed? Here are the steps I usually follow. It comes down to analyzing and trying to isolate the problem...

Isolate the problem via XHTML

You can try to disable certain blocks of code in your XHTML. Use comment tags and put certain blocks of XHTML coding in comments. View the page and see if the problem is still there. Do this block by block starting with the bigger ones: left column, right column, content, header etc. At a certain point chances are you see your problem disappear.
If you commented out a big block of content, uncomment smaller nested blocks of content now to isolate the problem until you have as less code in comment as possible.

Isolate the problem via CSS

Isolating the problem via XHTML is not always an option and so you can also try to disable certain properties of styles or certain styles all together to see what happens. Some styles might interfere with other styles. Some styles need to be more specified before they have effect because they've been overwritten by another style etc. Everybody has his or her own method to try to solve things and we all have our favorite tools. Mine is Adobe Dreamweaver and even a notepad has done wonders for me. There are also a number of plugins for Mozilla Firefox that you can use to debug your css like CSS Viewer, FireBug and Web Developer Tool.

In general, CSS is a great way to present your web page. SEO will also benefit on your CSS use, it will no longer need to crawl unwanted codes like because you wont be using tables unless there is a tabular data to present. SEO will be so efficient on your web page. So i urge every web designer out there to use CSS every time they design web pages. After all it is the road to enlightenment.

Those who know web know Microsoft's Internet Explorer, in any version, is slow and hopeless. It has now been revealed the most widely-used internet browser has a SERIOUS security hole that leaves computers exposed to hijack attempts.

Anti-virus software maker Trend Micro has confirmed that the said 'hole' helps criminals trick you and I into entering websites that contain code which can steal our passwords, as well as more serious information such as financials.

Trend Micro security researcher Paul Ferguson told the Associated Press that this flaw has not been repaired by Microsoft.

Microsoft, according to the same news network, is "investigating the flaw and is considering fixing it through an emergency software patch outside of its normal monthly updates, but declined further comment".

Quite frankly, this is not good enough.

I will encourage everybody I know to switch browsers immediately. There are viable options out there that won't only help your security; they will also speed up your daily business on the internet.

The best option at the moment is Firefox (please click here to download), which is developed by the Mozilla open source community and has been leading innovation in the browser game for many years now.

Other viable options include Google's Chrome (please click here to download), which has less features than Firefox but is getting better day by day. It is now out of beta testing mode.

And Apple's Safari (please click here to download) is also a solid performer and is available for both Mac and Windows.

The move by many web users to the above options has Microsoft quaking (Firefox already has 20% market share according to recent statistics).

Internet Explorer would be far less dominant if it wasn't a default on all Windows computers, which is also a reason that some major PC manufacturers are now doing deals with the likes of Firefox and Google to include their browsers as defaults.

* Feel free to read Internet Explorer review by respect IT review website, CNET. Click here.

Every now and then, as a web or graphic designer, you hit a low point or slump in your creativity. A stage where you start to question yourself and sometimes question your skills.

The slump can bring about frustration about a project, and now, with quite a number of years in the web design game, I thought I would share my experiences with slumps and techniques I use to overcome them.

remember the good times

I think all designers feel that energy and buzz when we crack that bit of code, get that mark-up to validate or finish a mock-up for a client. It really is a buzz to enjoy your work and get paid for doing this... life is pretty spectacular!

sleep on it

It honestly is that simple sometimes. Just go to bed and try and forget about it. Have a good sleep and believe it or not, nine times out of ten the solution will wake up with you. I have done this loads of times, I have also not done this loads of times and sat there until the early hours of the morning sipping coffee and eating to keep myself awake hoping that my worn out mind and tired body can muster a solution.

look for inspiration

I guess this is the proactive way of dealing with the web/graphic design slump and probably one of the best ways to find a new idea. I am not talking about website galleries - they have their uses.

But I prefer looking away from the web, maybe a magazine or book related to the subject. Photography and art galleries will have you brimming with ideas but I personally find a non-visual inspiration the most effective. Sit down with your eyes closed and listen to a good album. I have done this many a time and found that the music somehow has colors and patterns associated with it.

For instance, I make very different websites when I listen to John Mayer then when I listen to Led Zepplin and sometimes I end up going in a completley different direction due to a song I have listened to and will revise my design.

plan your time

I think a big part of losing your creativity is often worrying that your not going to meet a deadline or your nerves kick in about the end product not being good enough. I have found that the best way to combat this is to plan your time.

Then take this target date and list all the tasks that have to be completed to enable that task to be achieved. Split those tasks up over the days you have until your design target date and presto... you have a plan. Once you have completed your tasks for the day, you must stop. By ticking a task off throughout your day, you will feel like you are making progress.

Hope this helps...

One of the hardest parts of graphic design whilst creating a website is the logo design. It is often very hard to create an image that truly represents a company, but if we keep certain factors in mind graphic designers can normally create a suitable design.

Symbolism: Is there a symbol that represents the companies core trade? Like a house for real estate agents or a flower for a florists?

Abstraction: An abstract shape could represent the companies core trade. Like a real estate agent could use a block shape to signal stability or a florist could use a circular shape that represents a friendlier signal.

Colour: Colours can be used to signal emotional responses. For instance, the colour red is associated with fertility, birth, danger, strengh, love and passion. The colour green is asociated with nature, health, cheerfulness, environment, money. Lighter shades of colours can be used to draw the eye away and brighter colours to draw the eye in.

Minimalism: Less is most certainly more when designing a logo as the most successful logos are simple and, most importantly, easy to remember. Think of Nike, McDonald's, Coca-Cola.

Typography: The fonts used for any lettering should also represent the brand. For instance, serif fonts signal a more traditional feel, whilst san serif fonts have a modern feel. A unique font can also make you stand out from the crowd. For instance, the Coca Cola font or IBM.

Texture: Add some dynamism by adding a texture. For instance, a wood grain for a health product or a scratched and rough stone effect for a builder. Adding another dimension to your logo can give it an edge and bring it out of the web page, a 3d edge adds an angle and is often used to infuse a modern connatation.

With the festive season around the corner, direct research of KayWeb clients has shown increased activity in ecommerce websites, particularly those offering gift options like digital goods, fragrances, clothes and hardware.

This may seem only logical with Christmas around the corner, however a deeper analysis shows that the economic doom and gloom has made people realise that online is the best place to find a bargain.

Shopping in malls and shopping centres is very time consuming and tiring. The thought of going to your nearest Westfield includes:

• Driving to the shopping centre
  
• Trying to find parking
• Walking a distance to get into the shopping centre
• Walking a distance from the shopping centre entrance to the shop you seek
• Seeing people you do not want to see
• Looking for the exact product that may or may not be on the shelf
• Looking for your make and size
• Walking to the next shop to compare prices
• Walking back to negotiate a better price from store 1
• Purchasing your product, knowing it may be cheaper in a shopping centre in another suburb
• Repeating the buying process for each individual product
  
• Repeating the walks, 'hopefully' with heavy bags in hand
  
• Being offered a new credit card by some exchange student
• Finding your car
• Loading your car
• Driving home

Putting these steps into text is hard enough... performing them, as most would know, is infinitely tougher.

Enter the convenience of online shopping.

• Jump on the web
• Google for your desired product, being as specific as model number if you wish
• Click the first few options to compare prices
• Pay securely
• Have it delivered

While Google is no doubt great, there is now even better options when browsing online. Websites such as shopping.com and Get Price do the hard work for you.

• eBusinesses list their products and prices on these websites
• You jump on this website and search for a brand of digital camera or fragrance
• It lists for you the prices from cheapest to most expensive
• You click on the cheapest; it takes you directly to that product on the said website
• You pay securely
• Have it delivered

The online option of shopping is no doubt the best option for today's time-poor class of human. This was proven with the advent of ecommerce.

But now, with the economy treading such uncertain waters, the online option of shopping has proven itself as the best option for those seeking a bargain!

These steps are done on Fedora 9. Other versions of Fedora (or other flavours of Linux) may still work but paths may be different.

On this example, we'll be running the new apache instance with user ian on port 8080.

First step is to duplicate the necessary files:

[root@linux ian]# cp -fR /etc/httpd /etc/httpd-ian
[root@linux ian]# cp /usr/sbin/httpd /usr/sbin/httpd-ian
[root@linux ian]# cp /usr/sbin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl-ian

Create a new directory which the new instance of apache will be serving.

[root@linux ian]# mkdir /home/ian/www

Edit the files using any text editor. I'll be using vim in this example.

[root@linux ian]# vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Replace PidFile from run/httpd.pid to run.httpd-ian.pid

Replace Listen Port from 80 to 8080

Replace all occurences of /var/www/html to /home/ian/www

Replace User from apache to ian

Replace Group from apache to ian

[root@linux ian]# vim /usr/sbin/apachectl-ian

Replace HTTPD from '/usr/sbin/httpd' to '/usr/sbin/httpd-ian -f /etc/httpd-ian/conf/httpd.conf'

Replace STATUSURL from 'http://localhost:80/server-status' to ="http://localhost:8080/server-status"

We are now ready to start a new apache instance.

[root@linux ian]# /usr/sbin/apachectl-ian start

I read with great interest last week when the independent Web Marketing Association called the 2008 United States presidential election, three weeks before a vote has been cast, to Barack Obama. The reason for this was that Obama's website won their WebAward over John McCain's website!

The decision to award www.barackobama.com the gong for 'Better Website' was made by 110 internet website experts, who sit on the Web Marketing Association's WebAward judging panel. And the fact that this same crew voted for Obama's website as 'better than Hillary Clinton's' during the Democratic primaries, and Obama ended up defeating Clinton, could mean the same path is set for November 4.

Let's take a closer look at both barackobama.com and johnmccain.com...

The Web Marketing Association judged the websites based on the following categories:

• Design
• Innovation
• Content
• Ease of Use
• Copywriting
• Interactivity, and
• Technology

In all these categories, Obama recorded smashing victories over McCain, with his smallest score being 70.1%, which was for Copywriting.

Viewing both websites, they have definitely gone down the path of Web 2.0 to pass on their message to American voters.

Both websites have similar large fonts; they both possess significant movement throughout pages, they both have shops, they both have significant calls to action directed at supporters, videos are prominent, blogs are updated and interactive, while 'interactive' is a good one-word summation of the image they both do well in extracting through their respective websites.

Does one do it better than the other?

I think yes. I am in agreement with the WebAwards that Obama's website is more interactive, innovative and better looking. Although I am not convinced that barackobama.com deserves to thrash johnmccain.com in all the above categories.

For example, I think McCain's website is at least the equal of Obama's in the 'Ease of Use' category, while 'Copywriting' is another category they could have scored closer in. However, as far as 'Design', 'Innovation', 'Content', 'Interactivity' and 'Technology' goes; Obama's website deserves to score higher thus deserves the better website award.

I feel the reason the respected judges have gone with a thrashing victory to Obama over McCain is the overall appeal of these two candidates to a web audience.

Despite efforts by McCain to jazz up his campaign with a fancy font and Sarah Pallin, he still looks like an old man. Not many surfers of the web are looking for old men.

Obama, on the other hand, is different. He is youthful and he seems genuinely web savvy.

Where McCain seems to be using the web because it is an essentiality, Obama has been using it to gather grassroots support from day 1 and credits in with building his profile as a president-worthy individual.