I am very proud to announce that my company, DCGWS Internet Solutions, is launching a brand-new service line, E-Commerce Websites & Shopping Carts to it’s already successful services, such as Web Design & Development, Search Engine Optimization, and Web Hosting Solutions.

We are offering complete turn-key solutions, including E-Commerce Hosting, Payment Gateway Integration, Shopping Cart Customizations, and even international Merchant Solutions.

Please feel free to browse around our demo sites, for functionality and look and feel of our solutions.

Coming soon…http://www.easy-shopping-carts.com 

If you are a web designer or web developer, then you know how important it is that the sites you design look and function the same in multiple browser environments. This is easily achieved by simply downloading the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Gecko, Konqueror, Opera and what ever you choose. But what about Microsoft Internet Explorer? It is next to impossible to run side-by-side versions of IE. Most designers use more than one PC to accomplish this. There are ways to hack earlier installations of Mirosoft IE to get the desired versions running on the same PC. This will not work however with Windows Vista. However, there is a relatively simple solutions to this problem.

First, you will need to download and install Microsoft VPC 2007. This a very simple install and shouldn’t take over 10 munites at the most.

Then, you need to download and extract this free version of XP released by Microsoft and specially designed to run on VPC 2007.

Once you have these files extracted on your hard drive, simply open VPC 2007, create a new virtual machine and point it to your extracted files.

That’s it…

As a web designer, with every project that I do I have to ask myself which browser would be the best to use as my default for testing. Many argue that Mozilla Firefox is the best to use during the design process. And I must say that I agree somewhat.

My reason is quite simple. Conditional comments and the top-to-bottom page code. Unlike many designers, I do not use CSS hacks. They are ugly, they do not validate, and they confuse me. Instead, I design my websites for three basic users:

• Internet Explorer 6 users
• Internet Explorer 7 users
• Mozilla Firefox users

Conditional comments as I use them only apply to Internet Explorer need to follow a logical order or they will not work correctly.

Most people know that the best way to execute a stylesheet is by calling it in the head tag using <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”foo.css” />.

You can execute as many stylesheets that you want in that manner. First, here is the order that I personally.

1. My Mozilla Sheet
2. My IE 7 Sheet
3. My IE 6 Sheet

Please note that the if you are using CSS Conditional Comments, the browser will first read the Mozilla CSS and then look for the stylesheet that applies to it and read that one for it’s proper rendering.

Here is the two formats that I use: One if for IE 6 and one is for IE 7.

<!–[if IE 6]>

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”screen” href=”ie6style.css”/>

<![endif]–>

and

<!–[if IE 7]>

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”screen” href=”ie6style.css”/>

<![endif]–>

Here are all of the rest of the valid formats, or at least the most common ones.

<!–[if IE 5]>  for all IE 5 browsers

<!–[if IE 5.x]> for specific IE 5 browser

<!–[if IE 6]> for all IE 6 browsers

<!–[if IE 6.x]> for specific IE 6 browsers

<!–[if IE 7]> for all IE 7 browsers

<!–[if lte x.x]> if less than or equal to IE x.x browser

<!–[if gte x.x]> if greater than or equal to IE x.x browser

And don’t forget to close the comment tag with <![endif]–> or your page will not render.

DCGWS Internet Solutions is very proud to re-launch our new business website. We are focusing on Creative Web Design, Interactive Business Solutions, and Search Engine Optimization at the new site. We have enhanced our content,  improved our layout, and made it much more accessible and usable.

Please take a few moments to glance at it and feel free to make your comments and suggestions.

Note: This is an interim layout, final version late August. Sorry about the 4 links to the site, just working up the anchors to speed Mr. Googlebot up.

If you also experience problems with your layouts breaking on screen resolutions less that 1024 width or more than 11oo width, here is a very easy solution:

<body onresize=”document.location.href = document.location.href”>
<script language=”JavaScript”>
  <!–
  screenW = document.body.clientWidth
  if (screenW > 1100 ) {
  document.write(‘<link rel=STYLESHEET href=stylehuge.css type=text/css>’)
  } else if (screenW > 900) {
  document.write(‘<link rel=STYLESHEET href=stylebig.css type=text/css>’)
  } else {
  document.write(‘<link rel=STYLESHEET href=stylesmall.css type=text/css>’)
  }
  //–>
  </script>

Replace your opening body tag with this simple script and create new css files with Problematic elements only.

Worked for me…

I read sometime back over at ProBlogger that if you aren’t able to update your blog, three things will definitely happen.

1. You will lose readers.
2. You will have a hard time picking it back up again.
3. Your SERPs will drop.

Well, I can affirm that All Of The Above is the correct answer. Now, even though I have a very good reason for not posting, I have experienced my traffic dropping considerably in the past two weeks.

Here is my writing plan for this week:

•  Update on CSS & The Widescreen Laptop (the solution)
• CSS Float Tutorial
• PSD to XHTML Conversion My Way

For those few who are still subscribed to my blog, thanks for hanging in there.

In an attempt to follow my fiancée’s advice about effectively managing my time, I brought my laptop to the immigration office to get some work done while waiting. There is a Starbuck’s right across the street from here so; I dropped in to grab a cup of cappuccino and a little Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, unlike Starbuck’s in the US, the Wi-Fi here requires a subscription or prepaid card from Smart Telecom. So, here I sit waiting for my passport and I thought I would make my daily posting now leaving me the evening free for my clients’ websites.

Designing with a Grid

I have recently read some good stuff about designing with a grid. Seems like a very nice, fluid way to layout an entire website using Photoshop or even Fireworks CS3 to get the divs correctly configured on the page. I am going to explain the basics of it using Fireworks CS3 since that is my personal favorite.

Setting up the grid that you want to work with is very simple. Just open a new document in Fireworks, I use 1280 x 800 for the canvas size which is the resolution that I use on my laptop. I am going to use a content area width of 1200 pixels which is 93.75% of the page whole. This will leave me 2.5% each side as background area and 1.25% for my scroll bar.

After setting the canvas size, click View->Grid->Show Grid. The default grid settings are 36 x 36, but you can edit them. I set my grids at 10 x 10.

Now it is time to start your layers here.  Each layer will represent a div.

More tomorrow on Designing with a Grid…

Here I get to tell you all the good reasons to choose me for your next website. I am joking of course, but as I web developer, I am always looking for new ways to improve upon my work. The other day I came across a blog posted by a fellow SEO that just couldn’t figure out why Google hadn’t indexed his client’s website. So, out of a professional curiosity I decided to visit this website and see if I could see anything obvious.

The first thing I did was verify that it was using valid HTML by running a scan of the main page. I was immediate amazed by what I saw. There were a total of 204 errors on the main page alone. There wasn’t even a DOCTYPE declaration.

It is obvious unbelievable that this company or person would hire an SEO with absolutely no knowledge of coding or page structure. So this is also true when hiring a web designer. Someone that has at least some knowledge of SEO.

Here is my list of 10 Things to Look for in a Web Designer.

1. Experience (with an online portfolio of websites currently online.)
2. Knowledge of CSS (cascading style sheets)
   1. Faster loading
   2. Less Code Bloat (means higher keyword densities)
   3. Ease of site-wide modifications
   4. Oh yeah, did I mention higher keyword densities?
3. Honest
   1. (If I had a dollar for everytime I refused to implement a technique that would eventually get the website banned from the search engines, just because the owner of the site wanted fast results…)
4. Which brings me to knowledge of SEO. Man, I cannot stress this enough. I just finished overhauling a website that was designed by someone that thought nice, clean tables was the way to go. His highest ranking keyword was “font”. Couldn’t he use something that wasn’t already deprecated! ?
5. Designs according to Web Standards. (Valid markup & accessible to persons with disabilities.)
6. Knowledge of coding languages (php, asp, python, perl)
   1. Companies grow…and so do their websites. Even if you don’t need user management, interactive interfaces today, you just might need them tomorrow. Designers with foresight.
7. Willing to show you a free mock-up.
8. At least some knowledge of web servers and hosting issues.
9. That listens to your input.
10. Affordable (gentlemen, it doesn’t cost you $300 per page to design someone’s website, you have way too much overhead if it does)

Ok, here is my little pitch…if you are looking for a web designer such as the list above. Just Google “DCGWS” without the quotes or visit us at Philippines Web Design.

If you have access to your web pages and images, there are other less used techniques to help you gain an advantage with the search engines. I will discuss a few of them here.

How many times have you been admiring a website, really enjoyed some graphical element on the page, for example, a background texture, or button styling; right-clicked the image and downloaded it to your hard-drive? Using the background as an example, many graphic designers and webpage designers simply name that image bg, bground, back, etc. If you have access to your files, then change the name of that image to one of your keywords or keyphrases. For example, web-design.jpg. If you do this, then of course you also have to change the image name in your html code. So, be careful, or you might wind up with broken images on your site.

Another super important on-page optimization technique is the proper naming of all your webpages. Let’s say that one of your pages discusses the details of the web design process. I would recommend that not only title, h1, alt, and images contain this keyphrase, but also the file itself. For example, you might name the file web-design-step-by-step-process.htm or .html, .php, .asp, etc. Get the point? Don’t overdo it though, webspam is frowned upon AND penalized by at least Google and MSN. The general rule of thumb is no more than three repeats in any page element. By that I mean, no more that three alt tags with the same keyphrase, no more than three images with the keyphrase combination.

Title elements…although there is no conclusive research on whether these attributes contribute to overall rankings, I would recommend using it whenever possible. A title attribute is not the same as a title tag. Lets take a link as an example. <a href=”www.example.com”>Example</a> A better way of writing this link would be <a title=”Example” href=”www.example.com”>Example</a>. Chances are more than likely that at least will improve your overall keyword density for “Example”!

ANCHOR TEXT

This is so important and often overlooked by most web designers. Let’s say that from my main content page, I want to link to one of my interior pages. The page I want to link to discusses CSS techniques and my main keyphrase for that page is “Advanced CSS”. Do not use, for example, For more info on Advanced CSS, click here. Never use that phrase “click here” as your anchor text (the text that you use to indicate a hyperlink). A far better way to do this would be, Read more on using Advanced CSS. If you do this, your target page will rank better.

While there are certainly many more factors that the search engines look at when determining a page’s relevancy to a certain keyword or keyphrase, these tips will certainly help anyone who wants their pages to rank higher.

In summary for On-Page Optimization, consider the following:

• Choosing a realistic niche or category for your website.

• Good domain name research for your site.

• Writing original and descriptive content

• At least 3 keywords or keyphrases for each page

• Keywords in title, h1, alt, and first and last 5o words

• 300-700 words per page

• Descriptive image filenames

• Descriptive html (or whatever) filenames

• Title attributes

• Good, descriptive anchor texts

• No duplicate conent

I’ll be back Monday morning with the first part of Off-page Optimization…

See you at the top of Google soon!

For those of you that do not aready know this, I have been living and working as a Web Developer here in the Philippines since last year. I thought I would take a few moments to describe this country, mainly the Metro Manila area.

Climate

It is a far cry from sunny San Diego, California. It is always hot! I mean always; day, night, dusk, dawn, you name it, it’s hot! Most people do not earn enough to be able to cool their homes or business with air-conditioners here so it’s quite common to arrive at an office or someone’s house drenched with sweat.

People

It is crowded here. At the bank, at the mall, at the market, at the Internet cafes, there are seemingly endless lines here. But by far the worst is the 5pm MRT (rail transit) leaving Makati City (the business district) bound for Quezon City (upscale residential). If you are so unlucky to need to take the MRT at this time, simply pray and shove! It is simply unbelievable how so many people can fit into one rail car. So, you may ask yourself? Why do it? You should drive instead. This is why…it takes approximately 45 minutes to go from Makati to Quezon City by MRT as opposed to anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 hours by car. So you sacrifice your personal comfort to managing your time wisely. It’s a no-brainer really.

Utilities

This is perhaps the largest nuisance here. Meralco is the name of the only electricity source here and they are simply pathetic. It is common for the “powers that be” to schedule an 8 – 12 hour power interruption sometimes as often as once per month. That means no internet, no electric fans, no aircon for that time span. In ten minutes without power you begin sweating here. So, as you might can tell, 10 hours is almost unbearable.

At one time I operated a web server here and was even hosting my clients websites but the frequent power interruptions put a stop to that. I still host clients, but from servers at The Planet Datacenter in Dallas, Texas.

Culture

I lived for several years in southern California and spent alot of time over in Mexico, so I am used to being in a foreign country. But nothing ever prepared me for the stares and overall rudeness that an American faces being over here. It is a constant occurence here. Due to years of American soldiers tramping around with prostitutes, my beautiful, well-educated fiancee is constantly being “sized-up” as such. We are adjusting and we simply ignore those people now.

Now do not misunderstand this attitude of mine. I love it here and will probably still be here 20 years from now. Stay tuned for more rantings…I need a vacation in Boracay, the Philippines version of our Hawaii.

Maybe I’d had a tough week…and it’s only Wednesday!