I recently had a discussion with a fellow web designer about images used on a client’s site.

Her client contacted her after receiving a $1400 invoice from the image’s license holder, for unauthorized use of an image. He thought that because he had found the image on Google Images that it was free for him to use.

Just because it is on the internet, it doesn’t mean it’s yours.

If you have a budget that allows, and you need the “perfect” shot, there are many stock photo sites where you can find and purchase images, thereby obtaining a license that allows you to use it on your site, in your logo, on your promotional material.

But let’s say your budget is limited. Or that all you need is a photo for a blog post.

What are your options for free photos?

Below you will find several sites worth bookmarking. I have highlighted some of the options to be especially aware of as you search. (click on images to enlarge) Always be certain that you read any license information. As my fellow designer mentioned, “Ignorance is not an excuse for theft” in the eyes of the license holder.

Google Creative Commons Image Search:  (*Please note that this is not the same as ‘Google Images’. ‘Google Images’ is not a free image site. It is still up to the user to verify and obtain image rights prior to using)

Check “Usage Rights” on the Advanced Image Search to filter your images.

Flickr’s Creative Commons Image Search: Flickr is filled with amazingly stunning photos from photographers around the world. Just about any and every keyword is covered.

But be sure to check the license. To do so: Go to “advanced search”, scroll to the bottom of the page and search within the creative commons content. You will still need to check the requirements that each user stipulates for their photos. Some allow a simple attribution, others still require that you ask for permission.

EveryStockPhoto.com: A search engine for free images from various sources. As always, check the license for each photo.

Stock.xchng: Owned by Getty Images, this site contains over 350,000 free images. Your search will also show premium photos from other sources.

As you search, be aware of the restriction information presented in the Download / Image Use Related Questions section of the FAQ page.

FreeStockPhotos.biz: Over 16,000 “free images available in a variety of commercial and editorial licenses, including public domain, creative commons, and custom agreements.” Check the FAQ page for usage information and check the ‘license details’ link on each photo.

 All of the sites listed above have different license details. But all of them are excellent resources. Just be aware of the usage rights and restrictions. Educate yourself and you won’t have to worry about receiving a surprise $1400 invoice.

Recycling old blog posts is a great way to come up with new posts.

But what if you want to explore something else. Or you’ve reworked all of your old posts?

Don’t fret – you’ve still got plenty of options.

Here are some of my favorite idea-joggers for those times when I’m, once again, staring at a flashing cursor :

• If you use Google Analytics (of course you do, right?) check the search terms and keywords that bring visitors to your site. If it’s relevant to your business, give them what they want: write posts using those terms for your topic. (*I’m not talking about ‘keyword stuffing‘ – that is something entirely different, and you want to absolutely avoid that.)

• It may sound obvious, but stay informed. Read magazines, newspapers, books, websites of all kinds. Sometimes inspiration comes from reading something that seems completely unexpected.

• Is there something that clients regularly ask you about? Write your answer and explanation in a post.

• Don’t shy away from a topic that is industry related, yet controversial. You might choose to take a neutral stance, offering up all positions and viewpoints, or, if you are comfortable, go ahead and write up your own well-thought-out stance on the topic.

• Pay attention to your social media accounts. What are others talking about? What questions are people asking? What are they looking for?

• Always keep a notepad or voice recorder close by to jot down ideas and thoughts or to journal. I can’t begin to count the number of fabulous blog posts I’ve come up with while in the shower, only to forget them by the time I was done. You never know when an awesome blog post will form in your mind.

• Where do you see your industry headed in the next 5, 10, 40 years? How is it different from 5, 10, 40 years ago? Reflect on trends and speculate on what lies ahead.

• Know of a good topic already, but don’t feel comfortable writing on it yourself? Ask someone to guest post, or interview them and write up your Q & A session.

• Worst case scenario (or maybe, it’s the best place to start?): take a walk, go for a run, drive through the countryside. Just step away from the computer and allow your mind to relax.

photo credit

When I started blogging, I had a million-and-one blog posts swirling around in my head at any given time. It seemed the ideas would never dry up. Fast-forward 4 years, and I found myself struggling to compose one good one a week. It may have been caused by the (false) notion that everything under the sun had already been written, or it may have just been the overwhelming prospect of coming up with the next great blog post.

It got hard. And it became a struggle.

So what do you do when you fall into those times of writing drought; when the ideas no longer flow, or even trickle?

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you already have a stockpile of topics sitting on your blog.

Not only does revisiting old posts help generate new post ideas, but it allows new readers to become familiar with some of your older postings.

Some ideas for making your old posts new again:

• Revisit what you’ve written in the past and freshen it up. Write a completely new post, based on the original (be sure to link to it) and update it with new information and statistics. Or include excerpts from it, and use those excerpts as a starting point for explaining any new views or positions and why they have/haven’t changed due to new evidence/support/data.

• Rewrite old content to address current/relevant events. You may have a fantastic post that stands completely on its own, but it’s buried under a mountain of old posts. Use current events as a reason to revisit the post. Write a brief summary of how a particular current event relates and simply link back to your post within it.

• Have you written a post in the past that targets a certain audience? Why not use the same topic and write a post that is relevant to an entirely different one.

• Create a roundup of some of your favorite posts. Usually this is a great way to end the year, but it can work during the year, on a smaller scale. Writing a post to highlight posts that may have been overlooked in recent weeks, creates another opportunity for readers to see and connect with them.

Blogging does require dedication and thought, but coming up with new posts doesn’t always require completely new thoughts. The ones you’ve already written can be some of your best springboards.

The countdown is on, and SOPA is expected to pass through the Senate on January 24th. (*UPDATE 1/19/2012 : Key Supporters of the bill have backed down after Wednesday’s protest)

Tomorrow, January 18th, 2012, many of the most popular sites on the internet will be taking part in a ‘blackout’ of their sites to protest this bill.

While none of our sites are equal to Mozilla (Firefox), WordPress.org or Wikipedia‘s traffic (<<< those links will take you to posts on their stance on this bill), we are taking part, to show our disapproval of this bill in its current state.

Our own sites will be blacked-out.

While we sympathize with those who have their work stolen from piracy sites online, this bill is not a good compromise.

It will change the internet as you know it.

Please educate yourself on this topic (in addition to the links above):

Stop American Censorship
Strike Against SOPA
WIRED.com – Black out your site the Google friendly way
SOPA Blackout rebuffed by bill authors (*duh…)
and on…
and on…
and on…
and at this point of my list [not trying to be rude] but, I say, just do your own Google search on SOPA Blackout (see how there are currently more than 2600 (!!) news stories on this?)… There is so much info out there…

And if you are so inclined, please add these plugins to your WordPress sites:

SOPA Strike (you will see out black-out tomorrow, January 18th, 2012)
Stop SOPA Ribbon (you can see this in the upper right-side of this site)

On that note — all of our sites will be on ‘blackout’ tomorrow.

Educate yourself.

(*this post is being cross-posted on all of our sites: Archer Creative, Living The Life Fantastic, Karla Archer )

as always — please feel free to include your own links on this issue…

Next weekend, January 14th and 15th, make plans to attend WordCamp Birmingham (nicknamed “WPY’all”). The speaker and sessions lineup has been finalized and, WOW -I’m excited about going!

I had already planned on attending, but I am also going to be speaking. My topic is Blogging and Dating: Not so Different. What your business or brand needs to know for attracting visitors.

Sara Cannon has done a superb job of organizing it, and there are plenty of tickets left (for now!) so makes plans to attend! And if you do, please make sure to introduce yourself to me.

For more info:

Schedule
Sessions
Speakers
Register (there is a student pass available; same access as the regular pass, but special pricing just for students. Sweet.)

Twitter rolled out a new design and interface yesterday, and I have to admit: I really like it. It’s cleaner and seems more organized and well thought-out.

I’ve been playing around with it some, and thought about writing up a brief ‘what’s new’/how-to, but there have already been several written. So why reinvent water…

Some overviews and quick start guides:

Twitter: Meet the New Twitter
FoxNews: Everything You Need to Know about the New Changes
Mashable: The New Twitter – everything you need to know
Cnet: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ : Three-way brand page shootout (yep – brand pages are coming to Twitter as well)
Hubspot: Twitter Launches Brand Pages for Business Accounts

Additionally, if you have the apps on your smartphone, be sure to update those as well. And Mac users: you can now download the new Tweetdeck app directly from the app store (free).

Have you had a chance to try out the new Twitter? What do you think of the changes?

I recently had the pleasure of working with Cara, owner of Health, Home and Happiness on a redesign of her site.

She was already set up on WordPress, but wanted a new look, along with some new functions to help organize and showcase her articles and recent posts, as well as her newsletter and ebooks.

Before

After

In the end, her site has a cleaner, professional, yet more relaxed feel to it. There is a slider for showcasing featured posts, and there is a tabbed area on the sidebar and a widgeted footer, to keep the clutter down.

Graphics were also created for advertising her ebooks that match the overall look of the site.

Does your website need an update or makeover? Let’s talk!

One complaint I often hear from potential clients is that their sites are slow to load.

No one wants their site to be “that site”; you know, the one that crashes your browser or takes so long for anything to show on your screen, that you just move on to something else.

Bottom line: Viewers aren’t very patient and it gives a bad first impression.

Slow load times can cost you sales and return visits.

Don’t be that site.

If that’s not enough of a reason to encourage you to read on, consider this: Google’s algorithm for site ranking includes site speed. In other words, your site ranking is affected by your site’s load time. If your competitors have a quicker load time, it could mean they come up higher in search results.

So what can you do about this?

Look over the following list to do some troubleshooting:

1) Check your hosting: Not all hosting companies are created equal, nor are the servers that they use. If your site is loading slowly, it could be because you are not hosting your site with a quality host.

2) Know your theme: Choosing a theme has an impact on more than just the look of your site. A bad theme may be so weighed down by messy (sometimes malicious) code that your site will get hung up on loading no matter what other measures you take. It’s not worth the risk, just to save some extra bucks. Invest in a theme from a reputable company, or make sure that your web developer is doing the same.

3) Compress images for the web: Image size is a common oversight. You might be aware that image size affects load time, but did you know that just cropping an image or making it smaller does not have an affect on the file size of the image? In order for it to make a difference, make sure that your images are saved for web quality: usually 72 dpi resolution. This includes all images and graphics, from your header, to your background, to the photos in your post. There is no reason to have print quality images on your site, especially at the expense of your viewers.
(Be on the lookout for my next post, which will show you how to do this. It’s quite simple.)

4) Get rid of what you don’t need: Is everything on your sidebar necessary? Are all of those plugins really improving your site’s usability? Also: just because a plugin is “deactivated” doesn’t mean it’s not having an impact. Delete any plugins which are inactive or that your are not using.

5) Consider your Content Management System (CMS): Just like hosting and themes: not all CMS’s are created equal. Most of the popular ones are popular for a reason. But if you aren’t running the most current version of your CMS, it’s not only a security risk… It could be slowing down your site.

6) Look into Google Webmaster tools: Create your free account, sign your sites up and find out how Google sees your sites, receive alerts, analyze data and much more.

There are many things that might be causing your site to load slowly, but this list is a great place to start troubleshooting. It might take a bit of time to carefully look each of these possible issues over, but your potential clients will thank you, in sales or return visits.

If you still need help troubleshooting or need to get set up on a fast-loading, SEO-friendly theme, please contact us.

On July 4th, WordPress released their latest version: 3.2 (named “Gershwin“, in honor of the composer).

Unless there is a security upgrade along with it, I usually wait a day or so to upgrade all of my sites, just to make sure nothing “breaks” because of it. We’ve all heard horror stories and rants on Twitter when people’s blogs go down because a single plugin is no longer compliant with the upgrades. Sometimes, it takes plugin developers a couple of days to catch up.

But I always upgrade at least one of my testing sites right away, to check out the changes and play around. (I run most of the same plugins on my “testing” sites as on my live sites, making it safer to check for possible problems)

When I upgraded, my visual-ness (I just made that up) immediately perked up on high alert: The changes are visually stunning. It is has a less clunky appearance – it’s streamlined and easy on the eyes. (Check out the photo on the left, for a peek)

But aside from that, it’s designed to run faster and lighter.

Some of my favorite changes (besides the beautiful new look), with my notes in italics:

• Enhanced Browser Compatibility-
  Drop Internet Explorer 6 support (*just a friendly reminder: please upgrade to the most recent version of your browser of choice. Not only does it make the internet world a lot more secure [most upgrades have as much to do with security as added/improved features] you’ll help save a web developer and/or designer’s sanity…)
  Start End-of-life (EOL) cycle for Internet Explorer 7
  Browse Happy notify users of out-of-date browser (love this)

• Optimizations to WP_Filesystem — Updates over FTP are now much quicker and less error prone

• Use monospaced font for HTML editor (makes reading your HTML code in the editor less painful)

• Full Screen Editor – called Distraction Free Writing – accessed via the Toggle Fullscreen mode tool in the Visual editor and fullscreen button in the HTML editor
• Updated styles for the Visual editor buttons (pictured below)

Have you tried? What do you think? I’d love to know what your favorite features are!

Read more about it:

WordPress 3.2 Released (WordPress Blog)
Get a rund0wn of all of the release highlights and changes (WordPress Codex)
Find out if your site is prepared for the upgrade (WordPress Blog)

Too often we hear someone in business say that if you can’t do something correctly/properly/”right”, it’s worse than not doing it all.

Of course, it’s always said with good intentions (right?), but is that true?

Is it really better to not do something, than to do it in a way that (some… many… few) others perceive to be incorrect?

Let’s take a look at that theory and break it down, as it pertains to social media and websites.

As I watch my streams on Twitter, I see “experts“, “mavens” and “gurus” doling out advice on the right way to do social media (often, while ignoring the rules themselves).

The tips range from the amount of time to spend on social media daily to which sites (ie: LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest) are the most effective.

For the most part, these sorts of tips are helpful.

But too much of what I see doesn’t pertain to specifics and facts, but instead, are simply opinions masquerading as truths.

“Correct”, “Proper” and “Right”

These words tend to be wrapped with a lot of emotion, because they are subjective. Culturally, “right” and “wrong” vary. “Proper” and “improper” differ. Making eye contact in the US and most parts of the world is considered a way of conveying openness and trust, while in some parts of the world it’s seen as invasive, disrespectful and offensive.

Just as there are differences in cultural norms, there are differences in how every business should and can use social media. Posting every day on LinkedIn may be great for one business but be a waste of time for another. Creating a campaign on Facebook could be a total flop for the tire company around the corner, while the restaurant across the street has huge success with one. (*edited to note: if you try something and it doesn’t work, no problem! At least you are trying and learning.)

The reason? Social media is user driven. It’s not a one-size fits all concept.

In other words, your business’s social media strategy needs to fit your business and your customers. You should know your customers and potential clients better than anyone. And if you don’t? Well, social media is the perfect avenue for doing so.

Listen to them. Help them. Know, learn and use your tools.

There is no great mystery to it. It just takes some research, planning and common sense.

Need some helping planning? Talk to us. We can help get you started.

photo credit