Below is a list of these programs and some advantages and disadvantages for your comparison:

1. Squarespace – Squarespace is an online tool where you can create your own website for whatever purpose. The designing method includes simple drag and drop elements so there is no need to have any coding knowledge. Squarespace also includes premade tempates to cut the designing time down tremendously and give you a clear guide to adhere by to ensure a clean and accessible website design. Despite squarespace being extremely simple to use, customers have reported the software is more on the expensive side, customisation is limited and poor seo performance which will affect the traffic of your website.
2. Canva – Canva is a website allowing you to make any sort of graphic design. It is a simple program that allows you to construct images for absolutely anything whether you need a flyer, a social media post, a worksheet or even just to edit a photo. Canva is free but they do have a lot of elements that you need to upgrade to their paid subscription to use. Canva is extremely easy to use and has many elemements, shapes and graphics to choose from. Although it’s effectiveness, it is better for a beginner designer as it lacks advanced custimisation options. With the free canva version you can only upload 5GB of data which can cause limitations if you do not pay fpr the subscription.
3. Mailchimp – Mailchimp is a service created to aid you with your business’s email marketing. They help you curate personalised email marketing campiagns that can be sent out on a mass scale to help you reach your business goals. It can also provide you with analytics of your email engagment to determine what audience your campiagn is reaching. The downsides of mailchimp would be the limited access of their free program meaning you do need to pay to get decent features, and due to their wide range of customisations it can be quite difficult to use.
4. Capcut – Capcut is a free video editiong software that businesses can use to create and edit promotional videos for their social media. Capcut is easy to use allowing you to select the clips you want and dragging them to the order you desire as well as adding sound effects, music, text, filters etc: The cons of capcut is its lack of advanced options for creation meaning it will definetely compare to something made professionally.

Whether you choose to use software yourself, or you hire a professional, it is whatever works best for you and your business needs. Keep in mind, when you pay for a professional, you are guaramteed to have quality work completed in a timely fashion and work that delivers results for your business as professionals will take into account what works online, what creates engagement and what will lead to sales.

The post Can’t Hire A Professional? Here is What To Use For Website Design Yourself appeared first on Webtek Media.

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What’s Gutenberg I hear you say?

Still with me? Ok lets delve deeper.

Wow sounds impressive doesn’t it? So what are blocks and how do you use them?

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

• List 1
• List 2
• List 3

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe with the printing press. Source: Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Gutenberg

When you think all is forsaken
Listen to me now (all is not forsaken)
You need never feel broken again
Sometimes darkness can show you the light

This is a Reusable Block with an inline image positioned right and paragraph text and some extra text so you can see the alignment as it wraps around the image of the sphero.

The post WordPress to roll-out new visual editor with version 5.0 appeared first on Webtek Media.

1. Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

Hummingbird zips through your site and finds new ways to boost page speed with fine-tuned controls over file compression, minification and full-page, browser and Gravatar caching. Load your pages quicker and score higher on Google PageSpeed Insights with Hummingbird site optimization.

Features available in Hummingbird include:

• Performance Reports – Pro tips for running your site at super speed
• Asset Optimization – Position, minify and combine files for top performance
• Caching Suite – Load pages faster with full-page, Gravatar and browser cache tools
• GZIP Compression – Blazing fast HTML, JavaScript, and stylesheet transfer

Get Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization

2. GTmetrix for WordPress

GTmetrix for WordPress

GTmetrix for WordPress actively keeps track of your WP installation and sends you alerts if your site falls below criteria set within the plugin.

With GTmetrix you can run analysis, schedule reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and receive alerts about the status of your site all from within your WordPress Admin!

Get GTmetrix for WordPress

3. WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache

This plugin creates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. When a page is rendered, PHP and MySQL are used. Therefore, system needs RAM and CPU. If many visitors come to a site, system uses lots of RAM and CPU so page is rendered so slowly.

In this case, you need a cache system not to render page again and again.
Cache system generates a static html file and saves. Other users reach to static html page.

Setup of this plugin is so easy. You don’t need to modify the .htaccess file. It will be modified automatically.

Features

1. Mod_Rewrite which is the fastest method is used in this plugin
2. All cache files are deleted when a post or page is published
3. Admin can delete all cached files from the options page
4. Admin can delete minified css and js files from the options page
5. Block cache for specific page or post with Short Code

Get WP Fastest Cache

4. Smush Image Compression and Optimisation

Smush Image Compression and Optimisation

Resize, optimise and compress all of your images with the incredibly powerful and 100% free WordPress image smusher, brought to you by the superteam at WPMU DEV!

Smush has been benchmarked and tested number one for speed and quality and is the award-winning, back-to-back proven crowd favourite image optimisation plugin for WordPress.

Features available in Smush include:

• Optimise your images using advanced lossless compression techniques.
• Set maximum width and height and large images will automatically scale before being added to your media library
• Process JPEG, GIF and PNG image files.
• Optimise any image in any directory.

Get Smush Image Compression and Optimisation

5. Compress JPEG & PNG images with TinyPNG

Compress JPEG & PNG images with TinyPNG

Much like Smush, TinyPNG makes your website faster by optimizing your JPEG and PNG images. This plugin automatically optimizes all your images by integrating with the popular image compression services TinyJPG and TinyPNG.

After you upload an image to your WordPress site, each resized image is uploaded to the TinyJPG or TinyPNG service. Your image is analyzed to apply the best possible optimization. Based on the content of your image an optimal strategy is chosen. The result is sent back to your WordPress site and will replace the original image with one smaller in size.

Features

• Automatically optimize new images on upload.
• Advanced background optimization to speed up your workflow.
• Optimize individual images already in your media library.
• Easy bulk optimization of your existing media library.
• Resize large original images by setting a maximum width and/or height.
• Display JPEG images more quickly with progressive JPEG encoding.

Get TinyPNG

6. Autoptimize

Autoptimize

Autoptimize makes optimising your site really easy. It can aggregate, minify and cache scripts and styles, injects CSS in the page head by default (but can also defer), moves and defers scripts to the footer and minifies HTML.

The “Extra” options allow you to async non-aggregated JavaScript, remove WordPress core emoji cruft, optimise Google Fonts and more. As such it can improve your site’s performance even when already on HTTP/2! There is extensive API available to enable you to tailor Autoptimize to each and every site’s specific needs.

Get Autoptimize

The post 7 Best WordPress Plugins to Boost Site Speed appeared first on Webtek Media.

With the web being accessed more and more on mobile devices and tablets. So designing your website to be mobile friendly ensures that your pages perform and render correctly on all platforms.

If you are running WordPress then you’re on the right track. WordPress websites, either using a customised theme or the pre-package WP Theme, are all fully responsive so your site looks great on all devices and renders correctly.

In some cases an outdated WordPress installation, basic HTML or (God-forbid) Flash styled website won’t translate to a mobile friendly site due to advances in coding that weren’t available during the build process.

So what are responsive websites?

Responsive web design is pretty much what it sounds like — a website that responds to the device and size of the screen it’s being viewed on. One way to quickly check if the site your are viewing on your desktop is responsive is to take the corner of your Internet browser and drag it in, making the window smaller. Give it a try with ours and you’ll see that the layout changes based on the window size. Now try yours and if your page doesn’t fit the window then give us a call and we can make it work for you.

Another way to check is to use Google’s handy mobile friendly test via https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly. This 2 minute check will provide you with a detailed report on any issues which may be stopping your site from being responsive.

Mobile Friendly Test Results

Can I fix my website myself, what are my options?

There are a number of options available to you, so if HTML coding is your thing then we suggest you dive right in and give it a crack.

Option 1 – Purchase a Mobile Friendly Theme/Template

Sites like ThemeForest or Template Monster offer tens of thousands of mobile-friendly themes for a variety of content management systems (CMS) at reasonable prices. Simply purchase then upload and configure based on authors provided instructions and you’re good to go.

Perhaps a website designing platform such as Wix or Squarespace is more your style. These sites are popular and mostly easy to use as long as you don’t mind paying the monthly subscription costs.

Option 2 – Hire a web developer

If you want to get that professional look and feel and know the job will be right the first time then hiring a website developer is your best bet.

Resources

Learn to code via Code Academy – https://www.codecademy.com/
Design your own using Wix – http://www.wix.com/ 
Create your own Squarespace –http://www.squarespace.com/

Happy coding!

The post Is your Website Mobile Friendly for Devices and Tablets? appeared first on Webtek Media.

One thing we are continually asked when launching new sites is “when will my site be on page one of Google?” well if we had a crystal ball we could probably tell you, but unfortunately we don’t (but secretly wish we did). What we do know however is that regular information posting and text additions to your website or blog will almost certainly increase your chances of ranking in these result pages.

So how do we achieve this? I hear you ask, well several years ago when we first started developing our own search engine optimisation campaign, we spend many dollars and hours on purchasing and reading valuable information from SEO Pioneers who had a proven track record in getting websites ranking in Google etc. All concurred that writing interesting and informative articles relating to your business, industry or field of expertise significantly increases your chances of ranking in search engine result pages.

So what is an article and how do I write one?

Well simply put, an article is a piece of well written text, that is informative and engaging to your visitors and generally includes keywords and links to pages within your site relative to the topic you are covering.

The benefits of writing and including articles in your own website or blog are quite simple in that the more content you include in your website with relative keywords, the more chances you have of jumping up the queue and to the all important first page of Google.

What if I’m not a good writer?

Not everyone is blessed with the gift of the pen or keyboard in this case, but don’t despair there are many excellent copywriting services available who work in conjunction with you help get your message across and simplify things by adding this all important content in the form of articles ready for you to post to your website or blog. For example our friends @ Brutal Pixie (brutalpixie.com) content write for many large and small scale organisations and websites and can easily produce quality copy ready for you to use. Tell em Bullie sent you…..

View our website design, search engine optimisation or social networking articles and stay tuned for upcoming posts on ways to increase readership and utilising web services in sharing your articles.

The post The Benefits of Writing Articles appeared first on Webtek Media.

What is a Sitemap?
Sitemaps are an easy way for viewers of your website to grab a quick snapshot of the pages contained within your site. Think of it as your website Index of pages. It’s also an invaluable way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling.

A time for discovery
Web crawlers commonly known as ‘spiders’ usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Use of Sitemaps does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Where do I start?
The easiest way to create a Sitemap is a simple HTML document thats lists all the pages contained within the site or at least the major category pages if you have large site. Obviously the list of pages are hyperlinked to the relevent page within the site, therefore making it easier for yoru viewers to navigate your site.

Tip: Add a brief description of the page content after the linked text to help your viewers, for example rather than listing your About Us page as;

About Us

try this…

Company Profile Information – A complete introduction to our company and it’s employees

OK, where to now…
Ok so you have created your HTML Sitemap with links to all pages within your site…that’s great, your viewers will appreciate all the assistance they can get, but what about the search engines? Well fear not there is also a facility to upload your Sitemap information to Google, Yahoo etc for them to crawl your site and it’s by creating an XML Sitemap.

The easiest form of XML Sitemap creator tools around has to be XML-Sitemaps.com they offer a free XML and HTML creator tool that crawls your site and outputs a XML file ready for inclusion to Google etc. To access simply click here.

The post The Importance of Sitemaps for your Website appeared first on Webtek Media.

How Does RSS Impact my Business?
For Individual Users, RSS feeds can help keep you up-to-date on news, information and blog posts, making you more knowledgeable and productive, both at work and at home. According to Technorati as of March 2006, there are more than 30 million RSS feeds available. Most mainstream news and information sites publish RSS feeds.

How do I use RSS?
To view RSS feeds, you will need an RSS reader or aggregator. There are a number of free or low-cost online, desktop, mobile and Outlook–based readers available. To aggregate RSS into an external Web site, you will also need a server-based solution, either hosted or customer-premise based.

How do I publish RSS Feeds?
Several companies offer tools to help convert information from XML or HTML to RSS feeds. There are also a number of companies that offer hosted or downloadable applications for publishing RSS feeds, as well as blogs, podcasts and other content.

Where Do I Get More Information About RSS?
If you are interested in more information about RSS for your company, you can complete our contact request form or email us at sales@webtekmedia.com.au

The post Why use RSS? appeared first on Webtek Media.

I know what are saying, you’ve been in the web designing business long enough to know what works and wont doesn’t, what would my customer know? Well after approaching web design in the same manner, I’ve unfortunately had no other choice but to give in to my best laid plans and comply with the wishes of my customers.

Construction of good websites usually means that it has to be appealing to the eye, as well as being fully functioning for Search Engine benefits, but ultimately it must display professionalism for the business represented.

Complying with W3C Standards (W3C Markup Validation Service) for both HTML and CSS validation is paramount to good design and programming (but not necessary for good Google PR, I will discuss in later posts), so when designing we like to use base HTML formatting and CSS text font like Tahoma 11pt, to make neat easy to read text and nice page image layouts.

I will list some cases of where letting go has benefits for both parties involved and how in some circumstances actually resulted in little or no web traffic for the website.

Case Study 1. Architectural Firm, flash and font matters.

Our customer wanted the use of Flash elements to display several architecture images with a nice fade between images and changes to original CCS Font used Tahoma 11pt font and replaced with Century Gothic 11pt, which is used in all their logos and architecture design work.

As most would know embedding Flash files into your website results in W3C Validation undefined source failure, thus rendering the site Invalid Markup. After explaining this, the customer felt the need to have a nice graphical flash style image far outweighed the importance of quality valid HTML Transitional Markup. To them the appearance and perception of their website to their customers was far more advantageous than complying with the W3C.

In addition they wanted the use of the Century Gothic font rather than Tahoma. By design Century Gothic has a much larger font height than Tahoma and when used increased the page height larger than when using Tahoma thus resulting in the site displaying with scroll bars when view under 1024 x 768 resolution, where previously it fitted in the whole page perfectly.

In the end the customer achieved the desired affects they wanted and ultimately it is the ‘customer who always knows best’.

Case Study 2. Box supplier becomes boxed in.

Our customer had started a new business supplying cardboard boxes for moving and packing. They wanted a simple site with heavy graphical image elements and little or no text on the home page.

Explaining to the customer the role of text based search engines results and that having no ‘readable text’ on the home page would limit their visibility, they choose design over results.

Why you may ask would a company limit their possibilities of being found on search engines? Well the question still burns with us too, but as mentioned earlier the ‘customer always knows best’ and the decision was solely theirs to make.

Their philosophy was simple, their website was purely to be used as a reference guide and not the source of extra business, as their marketing strategies would be enough to garner constant business.

To this day I still wonder why they limited their marketability and in particular their website which is always online and can be searched at all times of the day.

So in summary the best laid plans of mice and men (well in this case web designers) can be a utter waste of good management as what I have stated all along that the ‘customer always knows best’ and ultimately they are the ones paying for your service so sometimes its best to lay down your guns and concede defeat.

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