Dave the Wonder Dog is part border collie, part black lab and all crazy.   Crazy how?  Peep the video below and see for yourself.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D28hhaU9RU

PS.  If you like the video, you can join us in our efforts to raise funds for North and Central Vancouver Island BC SPCA Organizations.  Please visit http://www.spca.bc.ca and dontate today.

Our first entrepreneur is Robbin’s Wreaths.  The small local business has been trying to build a website to market their hand made wreaths to the online market.  $10,000 later, they still have no website. Read the complete article online at the Oceanside Star or watch the first episode online now, free!

Hosting Nation wants to hear your tales of website woe. Submit your stories at www.extremewebsitemakeover.tv and you may win a free website makeover worth $6,000.

I’m thankful for the Xenu Link Sleuth tool.  If you need to check the link integrity of your site, there’s no better way to do it.  Xenu finds not only broken internal links, but also finds orphaned files.  It’s fast, it’s free, and it has proven invaluable in the fight against link degradation.

I’m thankful for the myriad of design blogs that give me advice, inspiration and practical knowledge that all help my stay on the cutting edge of design trends.  Included among my faves are Noupe, SpeckyBoy, SixRevisions,  A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, Hongkiat’s Design Blog and many, many others.

I’m thankful that I get to work with such great people.  When you like the people you work with as much as the work itself, it makes every day a pleasure (even when the work isn’t pleasurable).

When I’ve had a hard day, I’m thankful for the sites that make me laugh.  Emails From Crazy People, XKCD, and This is Why You’re Fat – to name a few.

I’m thankful for Irfanview because when you just need to do a quick edit, Photoshop takes too long to open.  Irfanview is a nice, quick and free alternative that offers quick and easy viewing, resizing, cropping and editing. It also has a batch renaming program where you can rename literally any batch of files (images or otherwise) easily.

I’m thankful for Mailchimp, because it’s a great solution for sending email campaigns.  They make it fun to create a campaign and the help and support is second to none.  I’ve looked at many email solutions over the years, most are dry and boring.  Thank you Mailchimp for re-inventing the wheel (and giving it some low profile tires to boot!  Vroom vroom!)

I’m thankful for WordPress, for making publishing on the web fun and easy.  I’ve used it for years, and it just gets better and better.  It extends for miles, with plugins and themes for nearly any purpose.  Just the other day, we built an entire website for a client in 1/2 a day using WordPress, and it looks as good as any “custom” sites I’ve seen.

I’m thankful for Firefox, and all of the extensions that save me so much time.  ColorZilla, MeasureIt, FireBug, xMarks, the SEO Tool for Firefox, Fireshot and many more.

I’m thankful for all of the clients that stay with us, and even those who haven’t.  You’ve all helped us become the company we are now.  Your feedback, your support and your business are invaluable to us.

And last, but certainly not least, I’m thankful for the marketing advice I’ve received over the years from authors like Jeffrey and Brian Eisenberg and Aaron Wall, from people like Steve Roper, from websites like Search Engine Land and Threadwatch and too many others to count.

PS.  Here’s a big picture of a Wild Turkey.  Gobble Gobble everyone!

In this part, we’re going to discuss some of the canned and affordable options available for non-existent and low budgets.  Custom design and development easily costs thousands of dollars, so it’s best left to another conversation.  For now, let’s start with the no-budget scenario.

The no-budget website is suitable for individuals and community organizations with limited funding.  Notice how I excluded small businesses?  We’ll get to that in a minute.

No-Budget Solutions

WordPress (hosted), Blogspot, TypePad – if you want free, you’ll be limited to blogs or other similar platforms.  While there are other free options available that work off of subdomains and other trickery, I’m loathe to recommend them as you never know if they’ll be there in a year or two, and you could lose all of your data.  Plus, free isn’t always free.  With Homestead and Vistaprint (and a million others like them), you get a ‘Free’ website when you purchase other materials.

If you happen to be a non-profit, check out Tech Soup for resources and downloads available specifically for non-profit organizations.

Low Budget Solutions

There are hundreds of solutions for under $500 (too many to list here).  The common theme is that they all start with a shared hosting account (valued at $100).  From there, you can install WordPress or Joomla (both for free), get a free or premium template (templates start at about $20 and range to just over $100) and so far, you’re still under $200.

If you are a small, local business, most of your clients probably come from referrals and good word of mouth, but your visitors still need a place to get a snapshot of your business.  If you use a no-budget solution, people will judge your business accordingly.

Web development takes two things, money and time, each to varying degrees.  The more time you’re willing to spend, generally speaking, the less it will cost.  To keep your costs down, you can learn to do much of the work yourself (something I do) or you can use a free or low cost solution, one that gets you started.   Don’t think that you have to spend thousands of dollars, there are a lot of solutions for under $500 out there including our My First Website plan which comes with one year of shared hosting, a free domain and a fully loaded website based on the WordPress platform for only $199.

Want to learn about more of our sub-$500 solutions?  Let us know!  Contact Hosting Nation to get started today.

Assuming that your budget falls somewhere in between $19 and $100,000,000, here’s an idea of what you should expect to spend.

Color me custom

Gentle readers, there’s no easy way to say this, but a custom design/build for your website will cost at least $1500.  Minimum.  Period.  And that’s a bare bones website.  No frills, no bells OR whistles.  Basic website, home and inside page.  Designed, probably not sliced.

In my mind, if you want a custom website, you should be prepared to spend up to $10,000.  It may not cost that much, but you should be prepared to spend that much.

OK, well, maybe I don’t need a custom website.

The odds of somebody seeing a website that looks just like yours is slim and, even if it does, honestly?  Nobody will care.  Using pre-built applications, services, frameworks and designs can save you a fortune and give you something that looks really slick.    There are a lot of possible choices for a semi-custom website including Joomla, WordPress and many others.  Templates are available in multitudes, either free or paid and come pre-sliced.  If you’re not committed to a creating a unique user experience with a striking, modern custom website, you can cut your expenses down to less than a thousand dollars including your hosting and domain.

Oh, goody, so what you’re saying is that if I do it myself, I could get the same results for much cheaper?

Screech.  All stop.  I’m not saying that at all.  In fact, I’m fairly certain that unless you’re already a web designer, you won’t be able to create an awesome customer experience on your first go.   What I am saying is that once you commit to working with a design agency, armed with the knowledge that there are affordable solutions available,  you can keep your costs to a minimum.

But I really think I can do this, I saw one company that offers FREE websites and it looks really simple.

I’ve seen those sites as well.  Make sure you read the fine print with these folks.   Most of them charge between $4.99 and $6.99/month for a 5 page basic, no frills website.  In many cases, you don’t own the domain or the design, so it’s best to check with the company first.  It’s true that they’ll have you up and running quickly and they offer thousands of “professionally designed” templates, but you’re giving up source control, SEO and a variety of other features you get with standard shared hosting accounts.

Seriously though, it doesn’t seem that difficult to me.

I hear this all the time.  The answer is that it’s as tough as you want it to be.  Hamburger Helper and Filet Mignon are both beef dishes.   I make the Hamburger Helper and it’s still only going to be as good as its ingredients.  Would you make Hamburger Helper for the main course of a dinner party?  Even if you happen to think it’s the best Hamburger Helper ever?  Even if you made it with your own two hands?  Even if you’ve never made Filet Mignon before, and it seems scary and intimidating?

Intermission

Check out this short video on the vendor client relationship produced by Scofield Editorial, Inc.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY

OK, I get it.  I wouldn’t serve the Hamburger Helper, I would serve Filet Mignon because I want my guests to remember their experience fondly.  What’s next?

Next?  Stay tuned, in our next post we’ll talk about what the best options available are for a range of budgets, technical know-how levels and objectives.  If you’re done looking, and want to discuss some solutions, contact us for more information on solutions for getting on the web starting under $100.

The sites I browse when I’m kicking back and defragging range in theme and content though most of them are funny in one way or another.  Humour comes from many sources for me, though lately I tend to hit emailsfromcrazypeople.com.

Normally the emails just make me laugh.  Today, the laughter was accompanied by a lesson, the moral of which was “don’t steal people’s images”.  To start things off, here’s a screencap of the email (source: emailsfromcrazypeople.com, original source: unknown)

There’s a moral to the story here, and the moral is that the images that are shown in a Google image search are not public domain any more than the webpages you would find in a regular search.  When you click on an image, the note is displayed “Image may be subject to copyright” alongside the original source for the image.  That means you can’t just take it and put it on your website.  Well, you could I suppose, but you risk action from the image copyright holder and if you’re running a commercial website – possibly even financial action against you for damages.

On Hosting Nation, we pay for pretty much everything – or we use items in public domain.  On my personal website, I use all images either with permission from the copyright holder, public domain images or images with various levels of creative commons licensing.  I won’t get into what those licensing options mean, but I will make some suggestions for getting images for your site.

If you find something you like in Google images, contact the copyright holder via email and ask for permission to use the image on your site.  Most webmasters are decent folk, and don’t mind sharing.  Some will ask for a fee, attribution or some sort of reciprocation and, considering what rights free images cost, it’s a reasonable request.

Wikimedia Commons is a bountiful source of images, many of which are in the public domain, all of which are available for use so long as you provide the right attribution.

Crestock and iStock are both great sources for high quality images ranging from photographs to Photoshop files to vectors and animations.

deviantART is a meeting place for artists and designers where you can find a plethora of images, illustrations and source materials available for use (again, often with attribution of some sort).

Clip art.  I would stay away from the “free clip art” sites, and even most of the paid ones.  Most clip art isn’t very good (though you could probably find some treasures if you looked) and there are better sources for images available.  Having said that, the Open Clip Art Library aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used.  They currently have over 12,000 images in the public domain.

There are thousands of artists, photographers and illustrators trying to make a name for themselves by publishing their works online and making them freely available, you just have to do the leg work.  In the end, it’s well worth the effort.

]]> http://hosting-nation.com/blog/find-rights-free-images/feed/ 0 http://hosting-nation.com/blog/history-of-the-internet/ http://hosting-nation.com/blog/history-of-the-internet/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:32:43 +0000 KhensU http://hosting-nation.com/blog/?p=247 A nice animated video of the history of the Internet.

As someone who writes an awful lot, I can relate to writers out there who find themselves sitting in front of their computer staring at a blank screen, with an equally blank expression on their face while they try and come up with something compelling.

I’m not a professional writer, either.  I’ve spent a lot of time writing,  I’ve even developed a personal style that I’m fairly happy with.  But, at the best of times, it’s still tough for me to come up with something other people would be interested in, and it’s even tougher to motivate myself to take the time to write instead of doing something with more tangible results…

That’s why I like Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die tool (you can try it out at http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html).  It’s essentially a nag tool for the writer who doesn’t write, the poet who procrastinates and puts off penning prose.  Jeff’s theory (that’s the guy who built it) is that while we respond well to positive reinforcement, nothing motivates us to take action now better than negative reinforcement -- and Write or Die offers that in spades.  The quote from the Write or Die page that resonates the most with me…

A tangible consequence is more effective than an intangible reward.

There are a few different settings for the Write or Die tool, each with escalating scales of annoyance and distraction.  You can avoid the annoyances if you keep on writing, but as soon as you stop -- well, here comes the pain.

On Gentle, Normal and Kamikaze mode -- when you stop typing, the screen starts to change color.  First to pink, then to darkening shades of red.

The added consequence on gentle mode is a box that will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing. On Normal mode, the screen changes color -- and if you persist in not typing anything, you’ll be treated to the pleasant sounds of Hansen singing the chorus for um-bop and if you’re really lucky, maybe get rick rolled in the process.

Kamikaze mode is only for those who want to get really, REALLY motivated.  Maybe you have a fierce deadline in the next hour, maybe you’ve just been putting off that journal or blog entry for way, waaaaaaaay too long.  In Kamikaze mode, if you stop typing for too ling -- Write or Die actually starts deleting the words you entered.  Here’s a demo video for those of you interested in trying it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdLLo08cJKY

These days, I can actually tear it a new one pretty fast when I need to (not much of a Rick Astkey fan either, which helps).  I set the application to nag me to write 500 words in 20 minutes. With my “hunt and peck” style of typing, it works pretty good.  Plus, now I know how long it takes me to write 500 words of copy.

I wouldn’t recommend this tool to everyone.  If you don’t want to see your words deleted before your eyes, if you don’t want to be serenaded with the soothing sounds of Hansen, then you probably don’t need to use this tool.

I like it because it lends itself to the principle of doing something.  I often say that great is the enemy of good enough.  What I mean by that, is that rather than waiting for the perfect moment of inspiration to come to me, I’m happy to get something down on screen that I can work on later, and if I get 3 -- 500 word articles a week out of it, I’d say it’s well worth any annoyance.

Oh, and for what it’s worth -- I did 534 words in 16 minutes and 15 seconds. In fact, I wrote the entire structure of this post (less spelling and grammar fixes) using Write or Die. If you’re having trouble finding inspiration, or just want to get into practice, give it a try -- who knows, you could be the next Margaret Atwood.  Goodness knows I won’t be…

Sean Enns is the Director of Marketing and Communications for Hosting Nation Data Inc.  Hosting Nation provides hosting packages and hosted applications to everyone.

The US election is an event with global resonance.  While voters in the US turn out in record numbers, those of us living nearby sit on the edge of our seats with bated breath waiting to see who the new commander in chief will be.

While I don’t want to get into the actual politics of the election (poor taste and all that), I wanted to take a moment to point out some great resources for following the US election.  There’s a whole lot of coverage going on right now, and thankfully – you don’t have to miss a minute of it.

Keep up-to-date on the 2008 election with Google Maps.  There are some pretty cool maps here, including an ‘up-to-the-minute’ map reflecting results from polling stations across the US.  Alongside this map you’ll also find mashups with search queries, predictions, primary results and fundraising amounts.

YouTube in partnership with PBS has published a Video Your Vote channel that allows users to post various videos covering several angles of the voting process from voters’ perspectives to problems at the polling stations.

270 to win is covering results of the election (the number here, 270, is the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidential election).

For up to the minute news coverage, your best bet is to visit CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News.  I personally like my news with a healthy dose of satire, so after I visit the big three I’m likely to hop on over to the Indecision 2008 blog for a taste of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s news-like comedic rantings (incidentally, Hosting Nation is no relation to the Colbert Nation – though we think he’s a pretty funny guy and would appreciate some wrist-strong bracelets up here).  While you’re at it, check out Twitter’s election channel for all the tweets on the current election.

The (other) big three (I mean Google, Yahoo and MSN) are covering the results in their own way.  Yahoo’s home page has great coverage with a ton of useful links and resources to help you follow along including this link to NPR’s 2008 Election Map and Electoral Vote Map. Google doesn’t seem to offer much coverage, but as always you can sign up for a Google Alert to get the latest news or simply visit Google News for ongoing coverage.  MSN (as always) falls somewhere in between.

Whoever wins, I think we’re pretty lucky to have the depth of coverage that we do – I know I’ve barely scratched the surface.  If you have an elections resource that offers a special insight not listed here, please post it in the comments.

DISCLAIMER: Hosting Nation does not support or endorse any particular candidate in the current election.  This post is simply meant to inform and hopefully educate you about some of the tools and resources available for tracking the election results.