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    • Archive for May, 2012

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    The Vulnerabilities of WordPress

    Monday, May 28th, 2012

    There is power in knowing, this is the principle that everybody should adopt especially when taking a stand against any unscrupulous deeds using the internet. If you are going to take your business online for purposes of increasing your business reach and increasing the total number of your potential client then you definitely need to utilise web design processes in order to put up your website. You will also be needing the different website design tools and content management systems such as WordPress.

    Why Use WordPress for Web Design?

    WordPress is considered by a lot of website designers as the primary choice for website design content management system because of the fact that this CMS is free and that it offers a lot of plugins and templates which are also made available for free. On top of this, WordPress is capable of easily transforming itself into an SEO-friendly platform allowing web crawlers to easily crawl the website thus increasing its possibility of being ranked and being indexed by the search engines.

    WordPress Vulnerabilities

    Everything today is hackable, that includes the WordPress content management system. WordPress do have several vulnerabilities which if left unchecked could be the avenue for hackers to manipulate in order to gain access to the backend of the website. The following are the different vulnerabilities that may affect WordPress:

    1. Host Vulnerabilities – one must understand that WordPress in itself was not developed for hackers to gain access to the websites, thus in reality WordPress in itself do not have outright vulnerabilities. One of the reasons that make WordPress vulnerable is because of the fact that that host which contains the WordPress based website is in itself vulnerable. This is why you have to make sure that your host server is secured and that it runs the latest versions of software as well as different security applications.

    2. Network Vulnerabilities – sometimes the host or server is secured but the computer accessing the server is not, this is especially true if you are accessing your website backend through unsecured computers like those at the internet cafes, viruses and Trojan applications could easily transfer from the computer and pass to the network and enter into the host or server. This type of network vulnerability could be prevented by using a secured computer, one which is not publicly used and is free of viruses.

    Conclusion

    These two types of vulnerabilities which may affect your WordPress website could be prevented using several precautionary measures an example of which was given above. Another precautionary measure which you can do is to always update your WordPress version as well as your plugins, this is because incorporated in these updates are new security features that may combat possible attacks in your WordPress site. There is power in knowing the vulnerabilities not to inculcate fear or doubt to your website but rather for you to be able to take necessary measures and to conduct proper preventive measures in order to protect your website from the different types of attacks done by unscrupulous people.

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    Posted in Web Design Work, Wordpress |

    Web Design: The HTML5 Canvass Element

    Thursday, May 24th, 2012

    By now you should already have understood the fact that HTML 5 is not the same as that of the other or previous versions of the Hypertext Markup Language. If not, here is a quick overview of HTML5, basically what is new with HTML 5 is that it now allows several new elements that will provide for the compatibility with the newest web browsers. HTML 5 is the collaborative product of the different stakeholders of the World Wide Web Consortium, and it is because of the fact that it incorporates forward thinking some of the features of HTML5 would be to fit the latest in internet technology.

    Using the Canvass Element For Website Design

    Among the new elements incorporated with HTML 5 is the canvass element. The canvass element was introduced in HTML 5 in order to allow website designers to draw graphics. However, in order for one to draw the graphics using the canvass element JavaScript must be utilised. This means that the canvass element is just a placeholder in order to draw the graphics, the actual drawing of the graphics is through using JavaScript. To simplify the canvass element is the drawing board and JavaScript is the pen that draws the graphics.

    Significance of the Canvass Element for Web Design

    There are times when a website designer is stuck in his or her website design processes, sometimes there are images that could not fit into the structure of the web design, incorporating images might only contribute to the distortion in the overall website design. This is why the canvass element was incorporated in order to allow the inclusion of graphics where images can’t go.

    Conclusion

    There are several ways on how you can incorporate images into your website design, however with the canvass element this will be the first time when you can directly draw graphics into your web design, just remember that the canvass element is the drawing placeholder the actual drawing is controlled by JavaScript. Also, the canvass element is not compatible with Internet Explorer 8 and its lower versions.

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    The CSS3 Text-Effect in Web Design

    Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

    Conducting your website design processes does not only pertain on using the lingua franca of the web which is HTML but it entails the use of the different scripting languages involved in the different layers of the website. There are several layers of a website and each layer is controlled by a specific scripting language. This is done in order to make sure that every layer of a website design would function properly according to the needs and wants of the website designer.

    What Are the Layers and Web Design Scripting Languages?

    The different website layers are the following:

    1. Structural Layer – this layer is where the structure of the website is developed. It is associated with the use of the lingua franca of the internet and this is the Hypertext markup language. This is where the framework of the website is going to be developed.

    2. Presentation Layer – it is through this layer where the designs of the website are incorporated. Designing the website is made possible by using the Cascading Style Sheet scripting language. The latest version of CSS is version 3.

    3. Behavioural Layer- this layer is in-charge of the different actions and interactions of the website interface to the website user. This is manipulated by using the JavaScript scripting language.

    The New CSS3

    It is in the presentation layer that the web design is manipulated and through the Cascading Style Sheet the design is controlled. In CSS 3 or the latest version of the Cascading Style Sheet text decorations or designs are now made possible, especially that of adding shadows. This new text design manipulation can be done using the text-shadow CSS property.

    Conclusion

    The text shadow CSS property is compatible if viewed using Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome. Through the text-shadow property you can increase the presentation of the text without having to resort to graphic design.

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    The Caveats of Website Design Hosting Services

    Monday, May 21st, 2012

    One of the main consideration before you decide to make a website for your company to promote your products and services is the hosting plan which you would be acquiring to incorporate or which is going to be the host of your website. There are a lot of website hosting service provider out there and it is going to be a very big problem for your website and your business if you acquire a web hosting service that has limited capacity or that might cause your website a lot of downtime. This is why it is important for a website designer to choose the best web hosting plan for the website that he or she is developing.

    The Caveats of Website Design Hosting Services

    The mere fact that there are a lot of resellers of web hosting actually means that anyone could just start a web hosting service provider company. Some may offer what seems to be a great web hosting service but may be of a higher price, or some may provide the worst web hosting service for a nominal fee. In order for you to choose the best web hosting provider for your website you have to be aware of the different caveats in web hosting such as:

    1. Limited bandwidth – there are some web hosting providers which include in their plans a limited bandwidth. You need bandwidths in order to make the transfer of your websites’ data from one visitor to the other more efficient. If your bandwidth is limited then your website will not be displayed rather a “maximum bandwidth reached” error will appear and will be shown to your website visitors, in consequence such error will then mean that your site will lose traffic as well as revenue.

    2. Limited Storage – another limitation that web hosting service providers may implement is the limitation on the storage capacity in your hosting plan. This would again curtail you from expanding your website, you may not be able to grow your website according to how you want to grow it because of the mere fact that your web host cannot accommodate your files due to storage limitations.

    Conclusion on Website Design Hosting

    As a web designer you have to know whether or not your web hosting provider will be implementing such limitations in its different web hosting service plans. By knowing the limitations you would be able to decide whether you would like to acquire still such web hosting providers’ services or not and if such would suit your web design or not.

     

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    The Basic Units of a Web Design Team

    Monday, May 21st, 2012

    Web design can be very effective if it is done by a dedicated team, this is because of the fact that there are different aspects in web design that a generalist may do but could be efficiently done by a specialist, which means that for every aspect of website design there is a specialist who is in-charge of such specific task. Although generalist web designers can also do the job of every team member in a website design team, quality or time may be sacrificed especially if the website would require a specific deadline. For website design companies it would be a wise choice to have a team of specialists that would be in-charge of every specific aspect of a website.

    The Basic Units

    First, let us clarify what basic unit means, for purposes of this post basic unit falls under the meaning or is synonymous to specialists of individual specialist members of a web design team, these are the following:

    1. The Coder – this member of the team is in-charge of transforming the design into codes or into something that could be interpreted by web browsers. The coder may be the generalist in the group or team because he or she should understand the basic languages of web development like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

    2. The Designer – the designer is the creative member of the group, this is because of the fact that conceptualisation of the website is done by the designer. He or she is in-charge of creating a graphic design for the website, basically he or she will set how the website is going to look like, including the different color combinations.

    3. The Content Developer – every website must have its own content. Developing website content is not an easy task because the content that will be developed should not only be informative but it must also be SEO-friendly. Content could come in different forms it could either be a text, a video, an audio or an image. This is why a content developer must be skilled in creating all four types of contents.

    Conclusion on Website Design Team

    Again having a specialist rather than a generalist to make your website would ensure that every part of the website that you are trying to develop whether be it a content, the code or the website design you will be guaranteed of a quality output since every member of the team has its on specialisation and could focus his or her time and effort in the conduct of his or her work.

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Video File Format for Web Design

    Friday, May 18th, 2012

    In our previous blog post we have actually made it clear why it is necessary for website designers to incorporate in videos in their web design. Just in case you have missed it the main gist of the reasons on why you should use video or incorporate video in your web design is to increase the time spent of your website visitors on your website, this is beneficial because of the fact that you are able to capture the visitors’ attention thus giving him or her the salient points about your website or about your product or services. A visitor staying longer in your website would also mean that your bounce rate will decrease.

    Enter HTML5

    The talk about incorporating video into the web design became popular when the World Wide Web Consortium have announced and implemented the video incorporation capability of HTML 5 through its new element the <video> element. Before HTML 5 incorporating video in a web design concept was never thought-of, because of the fact that before a video could be played there is a need to download external video players, with HTML5 however there is no need for such third party software application.

    The Acceptable Video File Format For Web Design

    Now that you have an idea on the benefits of a video being incorporated in your web design you have to understand that not all video file format are applicable to be used with HTML 5. There are only some recognised video file formats which every new browser is compatible with and these are the following:

    1. MP4 – also called the MPEG-4 it utilises the video codec H264 and the audio codec AAC. However this video file format is only compatible with Internet Explorer version 9 and Apple Safari 5.

    2. WebM – this video file format utilises the audio codec Vorbis and the video codec VP8. It is compatible with the latest versions of Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera.

    3. Ogg – a video file format that utilises the audio codec Vorbis and the video codec theora, this video file format is compatible with Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera.

    Conclusion

    As you can see not all file formats are compatible with all of the different available web browsers, this is why when creating a website design with video in it, you have to make sure that you are using a file format that best fits majority of web browsers, on top of that choose a file format which is compatible with web browsers that are commonly used by internet users.

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Video Editing For Web Design

    Thursday, May 17th, 2012

    The incorporation of the new elements in HTML 5 makes it possible for every website owner to incorporate video in their web design. Using a video in your website to augment not only your web design but most of all your content would greatly help increase not only your website traffic but it would also help your users maintain attention into your website. Video is a popular content of choice nowadays for a website design because of the different benefits that it could give to your website design and to your website traffic.

    Benefits of Video

    Using videos in your website design gives several benefits and these are the following:

    1. Visual Content – videos are considered to be better than text content as based on the point of view of a website visitor. Although text content is better for SEO the incorporation of videos as your website content could help your website viewers to understand better the message which you are trying to convey.

    2. Lesser Bounce Rate – since videos can make your users or website users to stay focused on your video, provided you have made it interesting, you websites’ bounce rate is going to be greatly reduced. Bounce rate is the total number of website visitors who have not stayed longer than thirty seconds in your website and have already clicked away from your website. Reducing your bounce rate would not only increase your sites’ potential return of investment but also increases the reliability of your website.

    3. Captures Attention – site visitors can always click away from your website, but having a video incorporated in your website design will increase the possibility of capturing the attention of your website visitors and once captured other benefits would follow such as lesser bounce rate and improved visual content.

    Conclusion

    Using videos in your web design does not only allow you to add beauty to your website but rather it also adds traffic benefits to your website. Indeed video is already made essential to website design as it can be an alternative to your text content.

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Graphic Design Software For Web Design

    Monday, May 14th, 2012

    As what was previously discussed in this blog a website designer does not only need to know how to code or to write web design scripts. There is also a need for the website designer to know how to utilise the different multimedia editing software. Multimedia such as graphics, video and audio are now easily incorporated to a web page design thanks to HTML 5 elements. The problem however is that a website designer must be ready and be knowledgeable in editing such multimedia interfaces such as video, audio and graphics. One of the first thing that a web designer must know is how to create graphic designs that would be incorporated into the website. There are several software applications that may be used for graphic design which could produce great images that could be used for website design.

    The Software Applications

    There are three common names which we always hear when it comes to Graphic design, they are popular because of the power and flexibility which the application can give to a graphic designer and these software applications are:

    1. Photoshop – developed by Adobe systems, this graphic design software is considered as one of the most powerful and versatile graphic design application. This is because it does not only allow the design for a specific platform but rather it gives you the choice on how to design the image based on the purpose to which you intend to use it. If you intend to do it for video purposes then you will have to utilise the presets made available in photoshop. Furthermore, its compositing capability makes it more flexible through the different options available to edit different layers of the composited image.

    2. Corel Draw – also known as an alternative to Photoshop because of the fact that it has the same power and flexibility in terms of graphic design. Compositing is also possible and its features and functionality are almost the same as that of Photoshop.

    3. GIMP – again another graphic design software that offers almost similar features with that of Photoshop. Its third party support however is not as vast as that of Corel and Photoshop. It’s upside however is the fact that GIMP is actually a free software.

    Conclusion

    Knowledge is power as they say, knowing your different options in terms of graphic design which you could use to create and edit images to be used in your web design will give you an idea on what software will best fit your needs. Choose one software and become a master graphic designer using such software, we guarantee that you will be able to create great designs.

     

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    What You Should Know Aside From HTML

    Sunday, May 13th, 2012

    If you are trying to start out as a web designer trying to create your own web design you have to learn the different tenets or foundation of web design such as the different scripting languages like the hypertext markup language or HTML, Cascading Stylesheets or CSS, JavaScript, Hypertext Preprocessor or PHP among others. However, your learning curve must not stop with those scripting languages because along with the different processes in web design comes the need to incorporate multimedia to your website, therefore as the website designer you should also know how to create multimedia presentations in the field of audio, video and graphics.

    What Should You Learn?

    As stated above you should also learn how to create website design processes that involved multimedia. The following are the different multimedia that are commonly used in website design:

    1. Graphics – no website would be complete if there are no images incorporated. There are times when photos are too large or too small for your overall website design where instead of complimenting the web design as a whole it causes distortion to the general design. This is why it is very important to learn how to adjust or readjust images through the different image editing software. There will also be some instances where you need to incorporate drawings or cartoon images into your web design this is where you knowledge in graphic design would come in handy, thus it is important for you to learn graphic design.

    2. Audio – There are times when you need to incorporate audio to your website like music or a narration. Of course not all narrations or music would easily be incorporated into your website, in the latest HTML 5 version there are only some file formats that are recognised by browsers thus it is handy to learn how to convert your audio file in to a web friendly audio file. There will also be instances that noise in the background of your audio may be evident, this is where your knowledge of audio editing would come in handy.

    3. Video – perhaps one of the multimedia that revolutionised the development of websites is the video. This is because of the fact that it can combine graphics and audio into one. Enabling website visitors to watch video makes the user stay at a website longer. In order to make a presentable video you have to know how to edit videos as well as to add those necessary captions and graphics to help users in viewing your video.

    Conclusion Multimedia Web Design

    Graphic, Video and Audio and their processes of editing should be included in your learning curve because the future of web design does not only rest in texts and codes but also in multimedia.

     

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    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Should You Convert To WordPress?

    Sunday, May 13th, 2012

    Many of those starting out with web design have learned how to create websites or web pages using the basic scripting language the Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is considered as the lingua franca of the internet that is why it is important for those starting with website design to learn about the said language. The knowledge on website development of course will continue on with learning CSS, Javascript and PHP. Those are the most difficult part of the learning curve. So after gaining all the knowledge in HTML and other web design languages you might be asking yourself what is next?

    Use WordPress

    The next thing that you may have to do is to learn how to use a content management system like WordPress. WordPress is a free Content management system that was initially developed in order to use it for blogging. With its continued development however it became not only as a blogging platform but also as a content management system capable of transforming a site into an e-commerce website.

    Using WordPress is fairly easy because of the fact that it just would require you to get to know the interface and you will already be able to create your website using WordPress. It does not entail a lot of hand coding only minute ones whenever it is requires.

    Why Use WordPress?

    WordPress as stated is a content management system but above all else it offers several features which would allow you to fully customise your website accordingly. The following are the different features that WordPress has to offer.

    1. Free Themes – a lot of third party developers would love to share their skill in website design, thus they create themes for wordpress which could easily be installed in the wordpress platform. Anyone can customise their website according to the theme that that want.

    2. Plugins – aside from themes plugins are also readily available. These plugins are used for various purposes and it delivers a lot of power to your website. There are plugins that could be used for integrating social media to your website, plugins to hasten or make your SEO efforts more efficient and there are other plugins that will help protect your website from would be intruders. What’s more fascinating is that most if not all plugins are all free of charge.

    So Why Study HTML and PHP?

    Maybe you will again asking yourself are all the learning curves regarding PHP and HTML and the other scripting languages be of waste? Since you can already use WordPress to easily create a website? Definitely not, your knowledge in web design scripting will come in handy when you want to fully customise your WordPress site. You may use your knowledge in HTML and CSS to override the set codes in the design of your WordPress site, further you can also use your knowledge in PHP to create a WordPress website that would help you in customising your own theme or creating your own plugins.

    Conclusion

    Tie in of all the knowledge in web development would result to the efficient use of WordPress as a websites’ content management system. This is why it is very important that you do not shun away any of your knowledge in website design and scripting language as WordPress is just a product of all those languages and full control or manipulation of the WordPress site would mean the use of all those languages for web development.

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    Posted in Web Design Work, Wordpress |

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