Do you have a website? Do you have a Google Webmasters account? If not, you need one!  This document outlines how to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and explains a few of the basics.

Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters and sign up for an account.

You will see the Home page.  Scroll down and click the “Add a site” button, and add your website address.  Then, under “sites” click on the domain you just created.

You will now see the dashboard.  It is an overview of several tools:  Top search queries, Crawl errors, links to your site, keywords, sitemaps – you can click “More” under any section to see more information.

When you are done exploring the dashboard, look to the left.  There are 4 main navigation sections: Site Configuration, Your site on the Web, Diagnostics, and Labs.

First, click the + sign next to Site Configuration and go to  Settings.  You can see the current crawl settings and change them here.

Now, click the + sign next to Diagnostics.  Here, you will find HTML Suggestions.  Here, you can get a good look at how many pages that are indexed have duplicate meta descriptions, duplicate title tags, etc. It’s a good idea to look at this section often and see what can be fixed when you notice new items have appeared.

Last, click the + sign next to Labs.  When you use the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool, and enter any page from your site, Googlebot will show you exactly how it sees that page.  Click on the word “Success” next to any fetched page to see the results.

Under Site Performance, you will see a performance overview of your site.  It takes several days for this page to update after it takes a reading, you may have to give it a week in between updates.  Scroll down and you will see it offers page speed suggestions for improving your website load time.

If you have any questions about the other sections in Google Webmasters that I did not discuss, submit them here!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

Donna Carleton-Bird, better known as Bird Mommy, is the creator of a delightful kids DVD that is 40 minutes long for kids ages 2-7.  It is available as a DVD, or if you prefer to watch them online, you may purchase the individual musical story-rhymes and download them to your computer for just .80 cents each. Just visit BirdMommy.com to watch a 40 second preview of each story-rhyme and see for yourself what your kids think!

When I was creating her website, Donna sent me a copy of her DVD so that I could convert it into a digital format,  in order to offer the downloadable versions on the site.  When I was done, I gave the DVD to my niece.  She is now 5 years old and she still loves it.  I am sure that your kids, grandkids, nephews, nieces or other children in your life will love it too!

When listening to Donna narrate the story-rhymes on this Kids DVD, you can hear in her voice what a loving grandmother and mother she is.  Many of her poems were written for, and even with, her own kids and grandkids.  And after knowing Donna and her husband online for several years now, I can tell you that she is every bit as sweet as she sounds!

Speaking of Donna’s husband, Jan Davis, he is responsible for the wonderful music on the DVD.  He is an accomplished musician, and a classical, flamenco, and blues guitar master, among other things. Donna’s poems are set to Jan’s beautiful Guitar music, and it’s a perfect match! You can also find Jan Davis Guitar on Facebook.

Together, Donna and Jan own Stone Tiger Music, a legal MP3 download service which allows independent musicians to easily sell their music for download to the public.

I just got a phone call from a “professional” scammer.  Normally, I don’t pick up phone calls from phone numbers I don’t recognize – I get way too many telemarketers (or as I like to call them, phone spammers) calling to waste my valuable time, and I don’t like to be interrupted when I’m working, so my rule is that I only answer the phone when I’m expecting a scheduled call.

However, this number called several times in a few days without leaving a message, and I was curious to find out who it was, if for no other reason than to make them stop calling, because it was getting distracting.  The number was 773-000-0000 and the caller ID simply said “Out of area”.

It was an automated recording from “Account Services”, and it stated that the offer to lower my credit card interest rate was almost expiring, and to press 9 to continue.  “Account services” is pretty generic, which was my first tip-off that this was a scam.

My next clue? I have a few credit cards, and not one of them has ever called me about lowering my interest rate.  In fact,  I call all of my credit card companies like clockwork every 6 months, even if they don’t have a balance and are already really low, and ask them to lower the interest rate (which everyone should do).  However, in my 10+ years of credit card usage, I have never once had them call me and offer to lower my rate.

So, curious, I pressed 9 to see what they were going to say.  The way that these call centers usually work is that, once you press 9, the autodialer program that called you forwards you to a phone extension where a person is waiting.  On their caller ID, they will almost always see the dialer’s phone number, and not your number, since you did not call them directly.  For this reason, I felt pretty confident pressing 9 and knowing that he wouldn’t know who I was specifically.

The gentleman who answered sounded as though he was probably in India or Pakistan, and sounded as though he might have taken elocution lessons to speak like an American. For some reason, he was shouting rather than speaking.  Not shouting angrily, just shouting as though he was deaf or was in a very loud place, and it did sound as though he were in a huge call center with a cacophony of voices chattering in the background, so that was likely the reason.

I could not make out what company he said he was with.  I asked him to say it again. He spoke so quickly and so loudly, I couldn’t make it out at all.  I asked him to state his company name a 3rd time, and he said that he worked for “visa and mastercard”.

Here is a summary of his sales pitch:

He claimed to work for Visa, Mastercard, and Experian.  He said “they” did a survey and it showed that xx percent of people are hurting their credit by closing credit accounts instead of lowering their interest rates. (*note* it is technically true that closing credit card accounts hurts your credit, because it lowers your total available credit.  The more you know.)

Basically, his angle was that on behalf of Experian, Visa, and Mastercard, they would lower all of my credit card interest rates for free, “because you have such good credit and are still paying such high interest rates”.

It’s true, I do have excellent credit, but I think that was just a lucky guess on his part. The only high interest credit card I have is my business credit card, and it does not go any lower, for any reason, as part of the rewards program terms.  Believe me, I have asked every 6 months for 3 years as a matter of principle. So his information was pretty far off base in that regard.

So, anyways, supposedly, Experian had reviewed my account and decided that despite having good credit my credit card interest rates were “too high”.  He didn’t seem to know what those high numbers were, or the names of the credit card companies that were supposedly charging me too much interest.

It’s a good scheme when you think about it… no matter who you are or how good or bad your credit is, you will probably always consider the interest too high, and people’s eagerness to get a deal “before it expires very soon” may stop them from thinking about it too hard.  Whatever the reason, this scam has been around for several years, so it must be working for them!

I asked several questions, such as, “aren’t Visa and Mastercard and Experian three different companies, how could you work for all three?” and “Who is paying you, Visa, Mastercard, or Experian?”.  I got no satisfactory answer from him.  Most of his answers were just things he had already said, and it wasn’t any more convincing the the more I heard it.

He assured me it would cost me nothing. I asked if his company was a charity, that they could afford to randomly call and help consumers get lower interest rates.  In response, he again claimed that Experian picked me based on my excellent credit and that the reward is having lower interest rates.

He seemed to have a bunch of pat answers, but his responses were inappropriate – just a little off, like his english – none of his answers quite fit the questions that I asked, and no matter what I asked, I got one of 5 answers.   He never explained how his company got paid, or which company actually signed his check – but just kept assuring me that it would not cost me a single cent because he works for Visa, Mastercard, and Experian.

He, of course, needed my credit card numbers and other information in order to help me.  At this point, having listened to his grating voice blasting at top volume for several minutes straight, and having absolutely no intention of giving this obvious scammer any sensitive financial data, I hung up.

If anyone calls you and asks you to give them your credit card number, bank account number, social security number, mother’s maiden name, or any other sensitive financial data, NEVER give it to them.  A legitimate bank, credit card company, or other financial institution will send you an official letter in the mail on their stationary or with their logo on the documents.  Visa and Mastercard will never, ever, ever call you on the phone and ask you for any of this information.  The only time they do ask you for any information is when you call them.

Speaking of which, another good point to bring up would be to never call a phone number on your answering machine for a bank.  If someone leaves a message for you saying they’re from your bank, your credit card company, your credit union, or other financial institution that you do business with, and asks you to call them back, look at their official company website or in the phone book to be sure you are calling their phone number.  Anyone can call and pretend to be Mr. Smith from your bank and give you a phone number to call him back at, but that does not mean that he’s legitimate, or that his phone number is, or that it’s OK to give him your information on the phone.

On a related note, another thing that I have been telling people for years is that if you receive an email and it asks you to log into your bank account, PayPal account, email account, etc, NEVER click on the link given in the email.  If you get an email supposedly from PayPal then you should open a new browser window, and manually type in paypal.com into the address bar with your own fingers.  Otherwise, you may be clicking on a link to a site that has stolen paypal’s pictures and only *looks* like paypal.  In the address bar, it may even have the word paypal in the website address (such as http://paypal.fakescamsite.com or http://fakescamsite.com/paypal) but when you enter your login information, it steals it, giving the scammer (or Phisher) the ability to log into your account and steal your money, change your password, etc.

One other thing that people often fail to realize is that paying with a check is an easy way to become a victim of identity or other theft.  Your bank account number is on your check.  And if you’re like most people, so is your phone number, address, middle initial, and maybe even your drivers license number, as used to be the norm a mere 10 years ago or so.

My last tip for the day: using a credit card is much safer than using a debit card.  At least if someone steals your credit card number, they can’t suck all of the money out of your bank account and make your rent check bounce, just for example!

When paying with a debit or credit card, don’t let the card out of your sight.  A common scam in the last few years has been for Scammers to pay waitstaff and other cashier type workers to skim card numbers.  It takes a split second for them to scan the card a 2nd time into a handheld reader, and the numbers they collect are sold to the scammer who gave them the machine to use.  Then, they make a copy of the card and use it a month or two later and max it out quickly before you know what’s happening.

In 2009, the town where my parents live became victim to a similar scam, where someone tampered with the ATM machine at their bank, and was able to record the debit card numbers and pin numbers.  The bank caught it after only a few days, but it put thousands of debit card users at risk, who then had to get new cards “just in case”, since the bad guys weren’t actually caught, just their equipment was.

This concludes today’s informative rant about scams and keeping your financial information safe.  I hope you learned something, and that it helps keep you safe in the future.   Remember, a fool and their money are soon parted… be skeptical and be safe!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

You may be interested to know that you can customize the way you see your google search results by signing up for a Google Account.  If you have Gmail, or if you’re a webmaster or web marketer, you likely already have one.

After you’ve signed up for your Google account, you’ll want to look over in the upper right hand corner.   You’ll see a link that says Settings, which presents you with two more choices when selected:  Search Settings, and Google Account settings.

Click on Search Settings, and you will see  a page which lets you configure how you’d like to search Google.  It’s pretty standard:

• Interface Language / Search Language: Select your language preferences.
• SafeSearch Filtering: If you’re at work you definitely want to keep the SafeSearch filter on!
• Number of Results: I always view 100 results at a time.  It saves me the hassle of clicking next… next… next… endlessly.
• Results Window: You may find it convenient to open results in a new window.  I often do.  And if you don’t like it you can change it back later!
• Query Suggestions: Because my job involves web marketing and data analysis, I opt to keep the suggestions on, as it can be very useful to see what Google thinks are associated with my search terms.
• Search Wiki: this basically lets you give an up arrow to certain pages and domains in search results so that if your domain or page shows up for that search term, it will show up on top of the first page, making it easy to find if you’re doing keyword research or some other marketing research.  However, if you just want to see what comes up naturally, you have to turn it off, as everything you move up to the top will be there for that keyword search in the future, unless you turn it off or move it back down again.

The next thing you’ll want to do is go back to settings in the upper right hand corner, and this time, you’re going to customize your Google Account Settings. Here, you will see numerous options.  I’ll discuss a few of the basics here.

The first thing you should do is click on “Change password recovery options” and make sure that, if you should ever forget your password, you will be able to reset it.

Next, over on the left, click on Edit Profile.  Fill out as much information as you are comfortable with, and select whether your full name should be searchable.  At the bottom, you will find a bio area, as well as a Links area to link to your websites.  (if you’re really cool, you’ll link to GreenWebDesign.com and/or 50StatesClassifieds.com! 

If you have a Picasa, Flickr, or other photo service account, click on the Photos tab to link it to your Google Account.

Back at the main Google Accounts page (which you can always find by going back to http://www.google.com/accounts), scroll down to My Products.

You may already have some products showing here, such as: AdSense, Analytics, Checkout, Google Affiliate Network, Knol, Notebook, Picasa, Sites, Voice, Webmaster Tools, AdWords, Blogger, Docs, Health, Local Business Center, Orkut, Profiles, Subscribed Links, Wave, youTube, Alerts, Calendar, Gmail, iGoogle, Merchant Center, Page Creator, Reader, Talk, and Web History.

If you don’t have any products, you should “Try Something New”, where you can click on things you haven’t signed up for yet.  Try some stuff out and see how it goes!

The rest of this section, you can explore on your own!  Feel free to ask specific questions if you get stuck on something.

Ways to search Google more effectively using custom queries:

When you’re searching for something really specific, try putting quotation marks around it.  For example, “Green Web Design”.

If you’re looking for something and the search results are too broad, try a plus sign!  For example, Green+Web+Design

If you read something on a particular website, but can’t remember how to find it again, try searching just in that domain.  For example, in google, type this into the search box:  site:greenwebdesign.com marketing and you’ll see that you only get results from GreenWebDesign.com which contain the word marketing.

If you’d like to find some pages that are similar to a page, enter this into the search box:

related:http://www.greenwebdesign.com/

Webmasters: If you would like to find out when Google last visited a page on your website, you can do so by entering the following text into the search box at google.com:

cache:http://www.greenwebdesign.com/  OR  cache:http://www.greenwebdesign.com/index.html

There are many other ways you can search using custom search queries, but these will probably be more than enough for most people.

You’ll also find lots of fun Google Goodies at:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

Perhaps you are getting ready to plan a family reunion or other type of event, but don’t know how to find your long lost cousin earl or aunt sally so you can invite them.  Why wait til summer, when you can put these cold winter months to good use and try to track them down online!

The best place to start?

I recommend starting your people search by signing in at Facebook.com, Myspace.com, classmates.com, and other popular social networking websites.  Do a search for your relatives, and see if you can find them easily.  If so, offer up a thanks to the Internet and get back in touch.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.

If you find several different pages of results for the name, and one or more doesn’t have a picture, here’s the general idea:

scroll through all of the results and see if the people with pictures are the person you’re seeking.

If not, take a second look at the list, this time looking more closely at those with no pictures, to see if you recognize them in the details – a mutual friend on their friends list, or perhaps you’ll find that they’ve become a fan or friend of the restaurant you used to meet at every tuesday afternoon at 1pm.

If you can’t find this type of helpful information in any of the profiles, and there are only a couple of results that you’re unsure of, it doesn’t hurt to send a quick message to a few of them.

Remember to state any other names (maiden name, married name, siblings, etc) that they might have known you by;  State any other names you knew them by;  thank them for their time, and wait for a reply.

Don’t be offended if you don’t hear back right away – many people only signed up because someone talked them into it initially, and they may not have been back to their profile in ages.

Next, go to Google. com type in their name and see what you come up with.  In most cases, you’ll get gazillions of results, none of them what you wanted.  You just need to know how to ask!

If you go to Google.com and search for john doe, you’ll get way too many results to find the one you’re looking for, in most cases.  Instead, search for “john doe” with quotation marks around it, or or john+doe+chicago with plus signs instead of spaces.  Keep it simple – by using the quotations, you’re telling google to look for that exact phrase, letter for letter, no ifs, ands or buts.  if your search criteria is too strict, and you add quotation marks around it,  you likely won’t get any results at all.  On the other hand, when using + signs, you’re searching for john AND doe in one page, but even if nothing matches exactly, you’ll still see some results.

Remember, even if you can’t find them the first time, that doesn’t mean they’re not out there, or that they won’t be some time in the future.  If you try again every 3-6 weeks, eventually, you may just find them!

If you don’t, why not give Family Heritage Consulting a try?  Ron Kolb is a professional Genealogy Researcher, whose skills can be just as valuable for finding the living!

Above all, Good Luck with your search!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

For years, I built my own computers from parts.  I would research everything online, make my list, and then head over to Milwaukee PC, where I was lucky enough to enjoy a bulk discount. I used it often in the course of building computers for not only myself, but friends, family, and clients.   Whenever an older computer would die for good, I would save it so that I could harvest the memory, cd-rom drive, floppy drive, IDE cables, hard drives, and other goodies.  Over the years, my modest accumulation grew to epic proportions – not only did I have 10-15 computers at any given time, I usually had 5 or 6 different types of keyboards to, 8 or 9 15″ monitors, and several 30 gallon rubbermaid bins full of things like IDE cables, network cables, old video cards, and countless other components.

Another factor in the amount of computer clutter I had to contend with was relating to branding.  For example, an IBM PC, as you are likely aware, is not compatible with an Apple computer. Of course, as I learned when I tried to take apart my Apple IIE, they were all but impossible to work on – parts were actually welded in sometimes.  And neither of them were compatible with the old proprietary Compaq computers, where in order to even open the case, you had to have a special tool which could only be obtained at great cost, if you could find one at all.

Luckily, computer equipment has become much faster, cheaper, smaller, and more standardized in the ensuing years. Just for example: when I was 19 or 20,  my personal computer was a 486 with 4MB of ram.  I browsed with Lynx, a text only browser, because I couldn’t afford a computer that could run windows, and in fact, greatly preferred the DOS command prompt anyways.  DOSTREE was all the GUI I needed.  I saved up something like $400 in order to buy 4MB of additional ram, no small feat when you’re waitressing for 2.33 an hour plus tips, as I was at the time.  Think about that folks.  I spent that much money, not for 4 gigabytes (which is what I have in my current computer) but for 4 megabytes.  There are 1024 megabyes in 1 gigabyte, if that helps you to visualize just how expensive RAM really was back then.  So, keeping all of that stuff around made perfect sense.  If a computer’s CPU died, I could still harvest the RAM and many other components to upgrade my other workstations, or give a power supply to a friend who needed one, or swap out a customer’s broken CD-ROM drive, at a fraction of the cost, though admittedly at the cost of having a lot of old computers stacked up in the closets.

Last year, when my computer started getting too outdated and slow to work efficiently, I started looking around at reviews for motherboards and processors, and decided for the first time to buy a pre-made system for a few reasons.  One, because the cost of buying all the parts and putting them together seemed to actually be a bit higher than just buying a pre-made computer at the time.  Two, because I am no longer a  hardware geek, and don’t really have the time or inclination to re-learn the specs on every processor, motherboard, case, etc. every couple of years.  It’s a lot of work keeping up to date on hardware, since it changes every 5 minutes!  Three, I no longer see the point in keeping all of this older equipment around when it’s not even compatible with newer systems.  Fourth, and perhaps most important: most older technology was not energy star compliant, so to fix and run older computer systems in this day and age, when I can get a newer computer that users only about 1/4 of the energy of my older PC’s, seems like a waste on many levels.

So, I have been trying to gather all of my outdated equipment together and find new homes for it.  I was able to give a couple of workstations to a friend who wanted to build a geeky project in his spare time.  I also gave a couple of workstations to friends who wanted to keep their kids from trashing their real computers. I still had a lot of parts left though.  In many cities, mine included, you have to pay to dispose of old computers at the landfill.  Goodwill won’t take them either.  I know they’re useful to someone, and I don’t want them to go into the landfill because it’s not the environmentally responsible thing to do.  I found a local computer company that claimed they would take them in order to use the parts to make computers to give to the women’s shelter.  I thought that sounded fantastic.  I contacted them and got a response asking for my address and the time and date to pick them up, but after I sent my reply, I never heard back from them.  Another dead end.  So, I have started to look around for other creative ways to dispose of them without sending them to a landfill.  In the course of my search, I came up with some useful information.

If you are looking for ways to recycle your old equipment, give these links a try:

	Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) – This grassroots coalition engages in research and advocacy to help find solutions to e-waste concerns.
	Earth 911 – A nonprofit organization with detailed listings of reuse and recycling centers specializing in computers and electronics. By entering your ZIP code on the site you can find your nearest electronics recycling event/location.
	myGreenElectronics – Local ewaste collection sites.
	MRMrecycling – Local ewaste collection sites.
	Electronics TakeBack Coalition – Chart of ewaste laws & pending legislation.

Other suggestions are of course welcome as well! I’d love to hear what other people do to recycle their old computers.

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

This is part two in the “Meet My Friends” series, written by Jessica Franke from Green Web Design.

In this installation, I would like to introduce you to a very good friend of mine who is located in in Tucson, AZ. John Roberts, the owner of ElectroForensics.com, isn’t just a computer geek.  He can also install and service Local Area Networks, alarm systems, home theater systems, and more.

I had the pleasure of meeting John 3 years ago, when he started dating one of my closest friends.  I lived in Arizona for several years as a kid, and one of my favorite places has always been the San Xavier Del Bac mission in Tucson, so we got to talking about living in Arizona.  We found that we had lots of other stuff in common as well.  After they left for Tucson, I found that I spent almost as much time talking to John on the phone as I did to my friend.  Not only is he just about the easiest guy in the world to get along with, he can more than hold his own in technical discussions about a huge variety of topics.

Here is an excerpt from his professional website:

Electroforensics is the art and science of not only finding an electronic or electromechanical failure, but also finding out what went wrong and why, and implementing modifications to prevent it from happening again.

Specializing in

• Troubleshooting / Diagnostics and repair of
• Sound systems – home entertainment, PA and audiophile.
• large format printing equipment
• digital to analog interfaces
• electromechanical systems
• large and small scale commercial and residential electrical systems
• IT and Infrastructural (electrical, tel co, internet and network)
• security and surveillance systems
• Radio interference detection

Consulting :

• Does your potential new facility suit your company’s technical needs?
• I can help you choose the equipment to meet all of your multimedia needs.
• Reputable contractor referrals.

If you need a knowledgeable, versatile, reliable IT  person in Tucson, Arizona, you need to visit ElectroForensics.com to learn more about John and what he can do for your business.

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

I was looking through my facebook friends list the other day, noticing all of these talented people that I know who are self employed and doing fascinating things with their lives and their businesses, and I was thinking I should do a “Meet My Friends” series, where I showcase some of the other companies that I work with and the other small business owners that I know.  This is the first installment.

I have accumulated a large number of friends who are my fellow web designers, programmers, technicians, and other assorted geeks throughout the years.  We each have different specialties and talents, which naturally leads us to call upon each other for input, collaboration, assistance, or just to talk shop with someone else who speaks our language from time to time. This is where I will be starting.

Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Matthew Ramirez from Digital Marauders and Touch Clothing.  Matt and his crew make awesome eCommerce shopping cart websites as well clothing.  They specialize in the fashion and music industries.

Here’s an excerpt from his business website, Digital Marauders

We are a think tank. A cutting edge design house. We are a group of artists who are passionate about the look and feel of the world around us. We love to skate and ride fixed gear bikes on our way to a red carpet fashion event. We enjoy the movement and progression of art and the vibrations of the music that passes though our office floors. It is our goal to help bring your passions, your vision and your dreams to life. To effectively convey your vision and imagination to your customers and clients; to help you meet your goals; to help you become a Digital Marauder.

As if all of that wasn’t impressive enough, in 1998, he and his friend Amadeus (both of them talented DJ’s in the rave scene in the 90’s, which was also one of my passions at the time) started Touch Clothing. Here is an excerpt from their website:

Despite living in a world that allows people to stay connected in coutless ways, human interaction is on the decline.  We are increasingly losing touch with our true nature and our surroundings, often suffocated by the burden of work, money, and the drone of mass media.  Touch Clothing derives its strength from a tight knit family of loyal supporters.  Our designs represent an attempt to share this vision with the world. Join the Touchcrew and always stay true and loyal to friends and family.

I met Matt a few years ago, through our mutual client, Viktor Viktoria, who will need no introduction if you’re from Milwaukee and like fashion.  We also share a common client in the Brooklyn based Music Skins,  who make durable vinyl protectors for iPods and other electronic devices.  I will be doing blog entries about both of these fascinating companies in the near future, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

Digital Marauders is responsible for the gorgeous designs of both of the above websites.  I came to the team after the sites were already open for business.  Viktor Viktoria was looking for a local Milwaukee online marketing company that could also provide some support and design services when needed.  Music Skins was also looking for an online advertising company who had the technical skills to work on their website when needed.  Since Matt & I were already working on Viktor Viktoria togther with great results, he recommended me to Music Skins as well.  The rest, as they say, is history!

As is often the case in this increasingly digital world, though we’ve looked through each others’ photo albums on facebook and could recognize each other on the street, and despite the fact that we’ve been working together via email, phone, and ftp for almost 3 years, I haven’t met Matt in real life yet.   I think that a visit to New York will be in my near future.  Not only will it be great to someday finally meet my co-worker; I’d also love to hang out in some out of the way corner of his office and see what it’s like to be a new york fashion and web designer for a day.

It has been my pleasure to introduce you to my friend Matt in NYC.  If you need an eCommerce shopping cart website that is professionally designed by a very talented group of geeks, check out Digital Marauders.  If you need awesome clothes, check out Touch Clothing.  If you are in LA or NY, check out his newly launched Fashion Classifieds site, HoozDooz.com!

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Jessica Franke is the owner of Green Web Design, a full service Website Design, Web Hosting, Domain Registrar, and Online Marketing firm.  She is also the owner of 50 States Classifieds, and has been providing Free Classifieds online since 2002.  For more articles written by Jessica Franke, visit her blog.

As someone who began designing websites in 1995 as an assignment for a computer class, and eventually went on to own my own web design company, I feel that I have a few things to say about web design which may be considered useful by many hopeful web designers.

This is the first installment in a series of entries that I will be writing about the various tools that are used in professional Website Design.

First and foremost on the list of important things:  Website Editing Software! I started out coding mostly by hand in notepad, and alternated between that and Netscape Composer.  But when you get to the point where you are managing 60 websites and you don’t want to edit each and every page by hand anymore to say, update 1 link on the footer of a page, then you need to think about professional grade editing software!

When I designed my first website in 1995, there weren’t many tools available. I took a class where one of my assignments was to download a copy of Netscape Composer (which was one of first free “WYSIWYG” editors available for free on the web.) WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get”. In other words, you could point and click and it would create very basic HTML code for you so that you could format your text size, color, or font; insert a picture; make a link; center something; etc. But if you wanted to do anything more complex, you would need to read an HTML book and use trial and error until you got it to work. This software was actually pretty advanced for a time when the Internet was new and most browsers were text based.  Until I took that class, I had been running Lynx on a DOS based PC.  I finally decided to upgrade to Windows 95 and Netscape Navigator after using them in class.

Our class only spent a week on web design, but I was hooked. I started a free geocities page, something with a silly name like geocities.com/enchantedforest/neighborhood15/something/something – and went to work on a personal website. I asked the teacher some questions – how can I do this, how can I do that? – and he didn’t know. He said that half of what I wanted to do was simply impossible. And the rest, he had seen but didn’t know how to do. So, I picked up a copy of the gigantic HTML Bible, which I still have sitting on my shelf to this day, despite the fact that Google and the Open Source community and their websites have rendered it pretty much obsolete.  Sometimes there’s still great satisfaction in picking up a book and looking it up.  Especially when you have an Internet outage and can’t read a tutorial website.

Over time I developed what was, at the time, a fairly complex website design for a beginner. (Later I moved it to its’ own domain name, and it is still intact and looks the way that I designed it all those years ago on a free geocities server).

The next year, I bought my first version of dreamweaver – a student version of – at the college bookstore.  For my professional websites, I still use Dreamweaver today.  (The version I use is by Macromedia, but Adobe has bought them out since then).  You can read about and purchase Dreamweaver here.

There are many, many, many other tools out there.  However, I can’t recommend any of them.  Years ago, I took a computer class where students received a discount on Front Page (made by Microsoft) and was dismayed to find that it broke my javascript codes (which had taken me many painstaking hours to get working in the first place), it inserted proprietary code that often messed up my clean, crisp, HTML code, and in general, annoyed me at every turn.  I have also tried a few others, like Xara WebStyle, CofeeCup, and several online WYSIWYG editors, but never got the functionality that  I needed out of them.  Several of my customers used to use such programs, but later hired me after they either got confused and gave up, or realized that what they envisioned for their website was not possible to create with the tools they were using.  Many had the desire to learn proper web design, but not the time.  Which is where buying the proper software and making enough time to learn it, or knowing when to hire someone who has already made those investments, comes in.

If you are only maintaining 1 website for your business and don’t want to rely on a web designer, then some of the above tools *might* work for you, if you don’t want your website to be overly complicated.  They can certainly build an adequate website with a few pages describing your products or services, store hours, contact information, etc.  But you will never make a really great shopping cart website to showcase your hundreds of products with these types of software, so you really need to sit down and figure out what your plan is before you invest in editing software.  What are you trying to achieve?  Will the software that you are considering do what you need it to do?

The other problem I have with most simple editors is aesthetics.  Many times, WYSIWYG editors come with pre-created website templates for users who  want to get started right away.  They are great and very useful when used as a learning tool.  But sadly, they usually look like a 3 year old drew them with a crayon.  Or at best, like a 12 year old made them with a WYSIWYG editor. Yet many business owners use these templates almost “as is”, simply adding text and a few pictures.

I will be the first to admit that aesthetics have nothing to do with usefulness.  When marketing your website, an ugly website can be just as successful as a pretty website if it is programmed correctly.  Often, all the stuff that goes into making a website pretty, makes it more difficult for search engines to crawl through.  There are things to be said in favor of ugly websites.  And yet, no one wants to be the business with the ugly website.  Which is why these beginner and DIY tools are fantastic for learning the basics, but should never be relied upon by anyone who is serious about becoming a professional Website Designer, nor should they be used by any business who wants to impress potential customers who find their website.

If you are just starting out and can’t afford to jump in and buy professional software yet, don’t despair.  There are many website editing programs out there that will allow you to try them without an expensive commitment.  That way, if you decide that web design just isn’t for you, and you would prefer to hire a professional to assist you with your website, you won’t be out a huge amount of money.