The 1st step to searching a website designer is to explore a few different ones. Just don’t hire the first one you speak with. Here are some places to begin looking:

• Referrals – Referrals are your safest bet for finding good web designers. If you are active on social networks, you should pose the question to your fans or followers.
• Search engines – use search engines to find web designers in your geographic location. Meeting with a local designer can be very helpful when creating web outlines, storyboards and helping them understand the vision you want for your website.
• Directories – Directories are sites, which list individuals or companies who provide web design services.
• Freelance job sites – You can also browse sites like Upwork or Upwork to find freelancers with the skills you need.
• Use existing partners – Ask your trusted business partners, such as your IT Services Providers or Web Hosting Company.

Tips when choosing a designer:

Once you’ve compiled a list of potential web designers, use the 4 tips below to narrow your list even further.

• Portfolio – Look through their portfolio (list of their recent web designs) to get a sense of the designer’s style and types of projects they have done.
• Industry/vertical specialty – Web designers come with all types of skills, some may be more skilled in graphic design while others are stronger in development or programming. A good web designer will have expertise in both but also extremely important is an expert in marketing (see tip below).
• Reputation – Testimonials on the designer’s website as well as referrals from current/previous customers are a must. If they are active in social media, check out their accounts and see what people are saying about them.
• Marketing – You want your designer to be an expert in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) as well as other online marketing services. A nice looking website will offer you little to no success if people aren’t able to find you via search engines. Do a search for a few of the designers’ recent projects in Google and see where they rank.

Ask for a quote (proposal):

After narrowing your list to the few you need to start collecting proposals. Contact the designer and provide them with a short brief of your project. This will ensure that the designer has all the necessary information to provide you an accurate quote. Your brief should include:

• Background of your business.
• Your website goals and audience.
• Specific deliverables of the project (i.e. logo, custom design or templates).
• Example of website designs that you like.
• Include any necessary backend integration to a database, customer portal, etc.
• Your deadline.

Last but not least, make sure you feel comfortable communicating with the designer. The rapport between you and your designer will ensure a great working relationship and the website you want.

The post How to Find a Website Designer appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

There are many factors are involved in these costs and knowing about each of these items ahead of time will enable your business to optimize spending. In this article, we will review the various costs associated with starting a website and how to manage your budget. 

Establish Your Budget

The first part of planning is to establish a budget. Before jumping into any actual site development, your team should have an idea of the total funds you are willing to devote to building your web site.

Your organization should also decide on a road map for the development of the site and the scalability requirements. High user volume or high-performance features such as video streaming can drastically affect the total cost. 

Your organization should also determine whether the site will be based on a subscription solution. The following four factors will drastically affect the cost of the website: purchasing a domain name, hosting the site, hiring a developer, purchasing any WordPress themes or plugins and content development.

Cost of a Domain

First, let’s examine the cost of purchasing a domain. This sounds very simple, but there are several details to consider. For example, your organization may wish to explore other alternatives besides purchasing just a simple name.com. To protect the organization’s domain, you can purchase several similar country or area specific domain names. This will prevent other competing companies from posting competing websites with a similar domain name. Finally, consider a multi-year purchase on your domain for a long-term discount. 

Cost of Web Hosting 

The second factor to examine is the costs to host your web site. Your web hosting service can make or break your website. A hosting service provides not only aesthetic and functional features but can also affect the security, speed and performance of your site. 

The type of hosting needed will vary. In most cases, if you are starting out from scratch or are a fairly new business a shared hosting will suffice. However, if you know your website will grow quickly, you may want to investigate more robust hosting options like a VPS or cloud solution. 

Themes and Plugins 

Finally, your theme and plugins may also drive website costs. Premium themes can be purchased from shops such as ThemeForest, while other free alternatives may be found on sites such as WordPress.org. Premium themes are often more robust, offer customization, and come with support. Most site plugins are free. However, some paid plugins may also be worth the money for extra specific features. 

Also, if you are unable to customize the site to your liking using the non-technical editing options available, you will need to hire a developer or someone with the ability to make the needed changes. 

Content Development 

If you have the time and the ability to write all the content for your website, great. Unfortunately, this can be a time-consuming endeavor, especially if you use inbound marketing techniques like blogging. If you are going to write all of your content, it will be a considerable time investment. If not, you’ll likely need to hire writers and guide them through the process. You may be able to hire someone and bring them in-house or try to find a freelance writer that is knowledgeable or an expert in your field.  

Hiring a Team

If your business does not have an in-house technical team, you may wish to hire a developer, designer and or content writers. While hiring people can be costly, the right people can really help your business grow and move in the right direction. 

A Little Planning Goes a Long Way

When considering starting a website there are many factors to include in your budget. Be sure to investigate in detail your domain, hosting options, development and content costs, and themes. Each of these factors will affect the cost and performance of your site. Be sure to consider not only the cost analysis but ensure all the features that you wish your site to provide are planned for ahead of time. Don’t be afraid to make compromises to fit the website within your budget. 

With a little planning, you are sure to create the best website for your business without breaking the bank. If you need assistance ask us at Greenhouse Design Group we love to help your business grow!

The post Budgeting for Your Business Website appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

1. Color Trends – Bold is Beautiful

To make your website stand out among similar-looking sites, with the same WordPress themes and borrowed UI elements like buttons and menus, it is imperative to bring in variation. Use bold colors! The use of color is the most powerful and engaging design practice to easily grab the attention of the user. Breathe new life into the design of your site with vibrant, bright pastel color tones. Do not ignore the rich color palette any longer. Replace dull, understated and overused tones such as metallic chrome or muted blue with solid bold accent color shades like lilac, web green, cherry red. Do not be shy of using happy, rich colors to define your brand and help enrich the user’s journey online.

2. Make a Statement with Graphic Text

Typography has always been a vital component of great web design and branding.  The creative integration of texts and other graphic elements of images, textures, and patterns can have a massive impact on the visitor’s perception of the overall site look. The way we view text online is changing with the focus on fonts, font sizes and styles moving from safe, plain and boring to bold, large fonts. It has become easier to make a design stand out with the use of different web fonts due to its easy accessibility, thanks to Google Fonts and Typekit. It is possible for designers to make customizable changes by tweaking default designs from stroke thickness, character width, and serif typefaces, using Prototypo, and FontArk. Be adventurous and harness the power of artistic and dramatic fonts to make a strong statement.

3. Design Around the Customer Journey

Designers and site owners should preferably be guided by the customers’ journey through the website. Customer-centric web design does just that, with its emphasis on structuring and optimizing the site in order to make that journey better. Instead of focusing just on promotional offers and sales, concentrate on implementing a web design to attract your ideal buyer to further support them, speak to them and provide solutions to them as they go through your site. The goal is to allow the content on your site to speak to your audience in order to effectively convert visitors to valuable leads and sales. The customer-centric website design elements have to be in tune with the prospective customers. Most importantly, keep in mind Google’s algorithmic changes and customer behavior data. Your website has to load fast, be clearly organized & easy to navigate, have well-defined product/services, and contact information can never be more than a click away.

4. Layout Design- Centered Content or Split Content

Be goal-centric when choosing your layout design. Centered content layout is a powerful style, ideal for content-light pages, that is fast becoming an established practice on homepage designs. Centered content places the main message of the page right at the center of the screen with eye-catching visuals or smooth textures around it for a spectacular effect.  But if your pages are content-heavy, offering many products, services or categories, the preferred design layout is split-screen. Split content divides the content into wide sections, sometimes with a distinct look for each. Designers have more room for creativity, without endangering the clarity of content hierarchies. Split content gives users the choice of immediately heading where they want to, bringing them to the correct landing pages, thereby increasing the chance of converting.

Get Clever with Hidden Menus

There are many users that hate the omnipresent Hamburger Menu or favicon.  Help is at hand with the more intuitive navigation of clever menus. You can latch onto this new trend of using clever menus as it makes the user interaction simple and efficient through clean design and by removing distracting menu objects. Hidden navigations only appear when the user is ready to move on and take action by clicking on the appropriate icon. Hidden menus work really well for responsive web design too, which is the standard for small screens. It will soon be available for multi-dimensional scrolling. It can also be fully responsive.

Go From Drab to Fab!

These major web design trends along with essentials of flat design, material design, card layout, grid pattern, and symmetrical sites are all going to change our web experience. Businesses should not shy away from updating their online presence to keep up with the demands of the modern, younger and more mobile consumer. Make sure your website is still hip and relevant in 2016. Incorporate these 5 hot website design tips and your website will be sure to go from drab to fab!

The post 5 Trending Website Design Tips appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

The best-case scenario is that your domain expires because you didn’t receive your renewal notices, and your website goes down temporarily until it is renewed. Depending on your registrar, your domain could already be considered to be in the “redemption period” by the time you realize it is down, which could cost you hundreds of dollars to recover it. The worst-case scenario is that you don’t realize your site is down (maybe you don’t use it for email) and your domain is deleted. If that happens your domain could be registered by someone else and you would lose all the marketing time and money that went into promoting it.

There are a few simple things you can do to avoid any problems with your domain:

1. Update the email address that your registrar has on file any time you change your email address.
2. Set your domain to auto-renew using a credit card that your registrar will keep on file.
3. Make sure that you are listed as the registrant for the domain, not your webmaster or your hosting company.

You have a lot invested in your domain name and website, so take a few minutes to follow these simple steps to protect your website investment!

In our last section, we focused on protecting your domain name. If you are listed as the registrant if the contact email is up to date, and if you have access to your domain account, and if you have your domains set to auto-renew you should be covered.

Now we’re going to focus on protecting your website. Websites are nothing more than a collection of files. Some files contain instructions about how the site should look, some files contain instructions about what the site should do, some files contain information about what content the site should display, and some files are images that are displayed on the site.

Most sites are hosted on an external web hosting server. This is the server that is contacted and “presents” your web pages when someone visits your site. Files on your website are stored on the server. To protect your site, you should have copies of all these files.

You have downloaded one hundred download files from the URL surf. You will be needing all the web files, and in some cases, Don’t forget the database is also a part of your web site and you will need them as well, and you will want them as well. Make a copy of all your documents on a CD or DVD for safekeeping. If the content of your site changes regularly, you may want to make new copies of your files regularly.

If you are not of the technical nature, ask your webmaster, website developer or web hosting company to make a copy of your site files. It’s usually only a small fee, and once you’ve copied your files, you’ve taken the second and last step to save your website investment.

The post Protecting Your Website Investment appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

With all the advanced tools currently available at our fingertips, content management systems like
WordPress and WordPress themes or site builders like Weebly make it much easier to create and
manage a website since much of the work is done by using WYSIWYG editors to add and manage
content.

There are four basic steps to get your website up and running:

Step 1: Find a Name for Your Website (URL)
Step 2: Choose an affordable website hosting Provider
Step 3: Build your Website
Step 4: Publish your Site

Step 1: Finding a Name for Your Website (URL)

Start by choosing a domain name for your site and buying the domain name.

Since most of the more common names are already taken, you will have to be creative, but still, come
up with something that fits your business or website topic.

You can check for prospective names anywhere domain names are sold. Once you have found an
an available name for your site, you will be ready to move on to step 2.

Search our partner Hostlabs for a domain name here.

Step 2: Choosing an affordable website hosting Provider

When choosing a web host, there are a few things you should consider.

Price: Find a host that can provide quality services for the price you need. The key here is to find quality
hosting and not just the cheapest.

Reliability: Reliability is critical for a website. If your server is frequently down, visitors will not be able to
access your content or make purchases. Does the hosting provider guarantee your site’s uptime?

Support: Should a problem arise; will technical support be available to help at any time day or night?

Along with reliability, support is helpful in the event something does go wrong.

Step 3: Building your Website

Now that you have your very own website registered to you, it’s time to start building a website.

Typically, website builders are provided by your web host, but you can use anyone you like. Some web
hosting services have awesome site builders that make it extremely easy to get your site up and running
in just minutes utilizing the data, you provide when answering a few questions about your site.

If you prefer taking your time to customize your website, then you might want to consider using a CMS,
or a content management system such as WordPress.

Your hosting provider should allow you to easily install WordPress via the cPanel. If you do not have
access to a cPanel, FTP is also available, although a little more technical then the one-click installs from
cPanel.

WordPress will come pre-installed with free themes and there are premium themes that can be
purchased from various websites. Premium themes will usually allow for more customization and have
more features available to build the website you want.

Once, you have picked a theme. Upload your images and content, then add them to your site, by
logically placing to avoid clutter and confusion. It is imperative that your website is user-friendly since if
users are unable to find what they are looking for in a few seconds, they will look elsewhere.

Step 4: Publishing your Site

When you have finally finished creating your website, give it another look over and then click publish to
make your site available to the public.

Don’t count on receiving traffic right away, in the first few days, weeks, months, or ever… without a
good marketing strategy to drive traffic to the website.

20 Years of Quality Web Hosting

Putting a good-looking website without being a developer or designer is possible if you use the right
tools. But a pretty website won’t matter much if you don’t build it on a good website foundation. A web host can be a difference.

There are many web hosting providers on the web, but not many that have been around as long as our partner
HostLabs. They have been giving quality web hosting for over 20 years.

Compare their web hosting plans here and build a website today!

The post Building A Website Design When You Are Not A Designer appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

Apply Standard Sizes for banner ads

Banner ads work within the specs of the site where you plan to advertise. And since most sites use a set of common sizes, it is advisable to design in the size you will use the most. Google AdWords, lists the most popular standard banner ad sizes on the web as –

• 728 by 90 pixels for leaderboard at the tops or bottoms of pages
• 300 by 250 pixels medium rectangle, either embedded in text elements or floating on the right
• 336 by 280 pixels large rectangle
• 300 by 600 pixels half page
• 320 by 100 pixels mobile banner

You can take elements from the design in your most preferred banner size and reflect it in other sizes too. When you don’t take the time to resize or recreate your ad specific to the networks specs, your creatives become distorted and displeasing to the eyes of your target market.  Check out the banner ad for FatCow to see how your layout can work for a number of different banner sizes.

Create Hierarchy

All banner ads need to have a brand logo, clear message within 2-10 words about your offer  (High quality, Free Signup, Limited Time Only) and encouragement to click (Watch Now, Click Here, etc). The real challenge lies in the fact that there is not much room to do this so there has to be a right balance between these elements. Create a simple hierarchy of elements using size, space and color to draw attention to each.

This banner ad from JumpCloud showcases the company logo first, followed by the value proposition which calls attention to itself and the CTA button is smartly placed right at the bottom inviting clicks.

Pair Stylistic Typography With Images

Banner ads only have small spaces to play around with so make the most of it by using strong, easy to read typefaces with striking images. Make sure to use tight images and detail shots as there is a lot of competition for eyeballs. This banner ad by Cavender’s pairs playful text, handwritten type and great photography to effectively announce the brand and product.

Use Colors And Texture Appropriately

Color is generally the first thing we notice in banner ads. Different colors have distinct associations, and your choice of color will depend on the kind of emotions you want to evoke in your audience. Look up this great resource on color theory to know how best to use color in ads. Banner ads do not always have to be subtle so feel free to use contrasting and bold colors to draw the eye in. In this banner ad, the bright yellow rectangle ties in with the National Geographic logo and is highlighted even more against a black or blue background. The yellow CTA reinforces the brand and also invites quick action.

Incorporating texture within a banner ad can also create interesting dimensions, movement and depth to drive home the brand image. Check out the unique geometric polygon pattern in the limes of this ad for Corona by Vasiliy Yusov. The angularity of the fruit adds in dimension and edge to the product being advertised that you just wouldn’t get from a simple image or illustration.

Incorporate Stylized Illustration

Adding in illustration to your web banner ads can be simple or detailed depending on the message you are trying to deliver. Illustration can often speak volumes, especially if you add in animation to it. Illustration can be edgy and modern or fun and playful. Adidas ran a Line Runner sidebar ad campaign where the viewer was provided a black pen and prompted to draw a line which became a course for the runner with trees, buildings, hills, lamp posts popping up for an interactive digital adventure.

Focus On The Product

The ultimate goal of an ad is to sell so it helps to shine the light on the product. Tell your story using the product. Ikea is known for its space-conscious furniture and it highlighted this point by making the most of banner ad real estate too. Hovering over the ad would bring a product into focus and a click would send the person to the site to purchase.

Better Banners

Banner ad placements can certainly help users connect with your brand. And following some of these design guidelines will definitely improve your click-through rate and help you achieve your campaign goals.

The post Ideas For Designing Website Banner Ads appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

Whether you do the tasks yourself or hire out the work for website maintenance, it still needs to get done. To effectively manage your site, you need to consider five key areas:

• Content
• Code
• Performance
• Backups
• Security

1. Managing Your Site Content

It is so important to keep creating fresh and relevant content for your site—which can include text, product information, images, videos, free giveaways and more—to draw in new visitors and engage existing customers to read, share and comment. It will benefit you to publish regularly, support content sharing, and manage comments on your website to encourage people to check back often because it will give you a boost in your search engine rankings. To stay on track, decide on a publishing schedule and the types of content to publish. Consider the following types of content for your site-

• Product updates– Announcements for launch or discontinuation of products and price changes. You will need to update navigation and create a new page for the product or remove the pages of discontinued offerings.
• Company News – Update all information about your company and employees, whether it is media mentions, news articles related to your site or products, new staff announcements, etc as social proof to build trust among visitors.
• Feature Addition– Go over your site and make improvements to features as and when necessary, such as adding a blog or buttons/links to social profiles, FAQ section, etc.
• Giveaways – Consider including free downloads, giveaways or running a contest periodically to create buzz around your site.

To get your content noticed by visitors and search engines, you need to get the word out using available tools discussed below.

• Subscription – You can lure subscribers to your site with free offers of downloadable e-book or whitepapers.
• RSS Feeds – Create an RSS feed for your regular readers and use a widget to make subscribing easy.
• Social media – Identify the right social media platforms for your target audience and build your presence on these networks by scheduling regular posts.  Use available social media plugins like WP to Twitter, Postcron and Share This to post new content and prompt readers to share it through their own social media accounts.

If you are running a blog or a community website then it is absolutely essential to enable comments so your readers feel more engaged with your content. Even though you want your readers to voice their opinions, you still have to moderate comments before they are published and decide on how to respond to them.

2. Managing Your Website’s Code

None of the content will be displayed in browsers without some code to power your site. All websites, particularly those with databases and built on Content Management Systems, depend on complicated lines of code and specific software on your web host. Third party software, like WordPress and Joomla are always updating their software for bug fixes, security patches or feature enhancements. Your website may quickly become outdated if the code, database tables, or software is not upgraded regularly with the latest patches and security releases. The plugins, extensions and themes on your site should also have code that is efficient, reliable, and compatible.

3. Managing Your Website Performance

For a high-performing site, you have to identify areas of improvement in your website ranging from design, user interface, and content. You have to constantly manage the performance of your site against its specific goals—such as generating more traffic, increasing conversions, etc.—to encourage visitors to return. To maximize your website performance, you also need to manage the following tasks:

• Search Engine Optimization to help your site appear on the first page of the search results for the keywords/phrase your target audience may be using to look for content.
• Conversion optimization to encourage visitors to take action such as consuming your content, joining your community, making a purchase, subscribing, or calling your business.
• Gain a better understanding of your site, stats and conversions, and how people behave on it using plugins such as Google Analytics.
• Track in-site activity like bounce rates, referring sites, geo-location of visitors to your site, etc. through your web hosting account.

Optimize your site through responsive design for all platforms your visitors may use, including mobile and touch devices as well as desktop PCs. Not only should the site’s layout automatically resize on smaller screens, navigation should be easy too. Alternatively use an adaptive theme to ensure responsiveness for layout across platforms, through the use of CSS and also server side techniques with the use of PHP.  You also have to ensure fast page load times by testing site speed regularly so that it does not impact traffic adversely.

4. Managing Your Website Back-Up

You can avoid potential headaches by backing up your website regularly. Even if your web host provides backup services for your site on their servers, it is wise to take a few minutes to create and store back-ups as soon as you make changes or edits to your site. Do not rely on doing this job manually.  If you do, Murphy’s Law says that you will forget to back-up your site the day before it goes down or is hacked. Rather install and configure a plugin to take regular automatic back-ups of your site and store them securely. Consider the times and days when you do most of the work on your site, and schedule backups accordingly.

5. Managing Your Website Security

People with malicious intent often trawl sites to discover vulnerabilities in code and backdoors to gain access to your site.  Therefore, it is vital to manage the security of your server and website software by implementing the latest patches and new security releases. It would be wise to take some additional steps to guard against hackers and spammers on your site, as outlined below:

• Have secure site administration
• Ensure correct configurations for added security
• Use SFTP instead of FTP when editing or loading site files
• Use strong passwords for access to admin directory
• Only use plugins and themes from trusted sources.
• Lock down parts of your site or restrict access by including Restrict access by IP address

If you’re running an e-commerce site or multisite installation, use SSL for added protection to encrypt data between the browser and the server.

Be sure to monitor your site for attacks so you can take action as quickly as possible. Once an exploit has taken place, hackers often leave depository code to continue manipulating your system for their benefits, so you also need to address the source of the hack and fix any damage it has caused, and then upgrade the website code.

Website Management Made Easy

For a high-performing and secure site that engages successfully with its audience, you will have to actively manage the following major tasks on an ongoing basis:

• Creating content to engage with readers
• Keeping your code and software up to date
• Monitoring your site’s performance to improve reliability and page speed
• Improving search engine optimization and conversion optimization to make your site valuable to visitors
• Setting up regular automated back-ups so that you can restore your site anytime and anywhere
• Enhancing your site’s security to protect from hackers and spammers

Your web designer should provide you with a bug & glitch-free, professional website and your web host should ensure a secure and reliable hosting environment with updated software, security patches, and backups of your website. But ultimately it is your responsibility as the site owner to ensure regular attention and maintenance for your website.

The post How to Effectively Manage Your Website appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

You want your visitors to not only find what they are looking for quickly, but you want them to linger a while and explore your site. And, if you have a lot of content, you’ll want to be able to find it easily. Your site’s success – or lack thereof – sits on the foundation of its organization.

Taxonomy: An Organizational Method

So, what is taxonomy and how can it help get you better organized?

Taxonomy is a hierarchical structure for the classification or organization of data that enables websites to be categorized according to topics and types, enabling easy information retrieval.

To me, the most beneficial aspect of taxonomy is that is reduces manual content management. It allows you to dynamically retrieve and display anything on a page based on enabled tags or structured fields within your content. Taxonomy gives you the opportunity to balance the page’s content with other relevant information.

How Does Taxonomy Work?

Logistically, the way it works is that you are making content load dynamically when a page is accessed by programming a search on any number of taxonomy tags or other fields within your content block or page.

No doubt, you’ve seen this, but haven’t recognized what was going on behind the scenes. Amazon’s site includes taxonomy-driven content publishing. Whenever you log in and go to a page of interest, notice how when you scroll down a little you’ll see a section telling you other customers who bought this bought that, too. Or, it will show you what you should buy today based on what you bought yesterday.

Another example can be found at online news services, such as Reuters. If you’ve ever signed up with one, you’ve been given the opportunity to personalize your experience by your unique interests. That way, you don’t have to waste your time scrolling through hours of news you’re not interested in. As soon as you log in, you get to see what matters to you.

Some taxonomy sites allow the visitor to interact and filter in ways I just mentioned. But, other sites don’t require user interaction at all. You can also develop a site with only a little user interaction.

 Taxonomy Considerations

If your site has proper taxonomy, you will be able to bridge across subjects, and better manage and often reuse your content – at scale. Of course, it will assist with effective navigation and will, ultimately, provide a better product and brand alignment. At the end of the day, it will improve SEO and findability, and even support social sharing.

When creating a sound taxonomy, the first few things to consider is its projected longevity and flexibility. This means thinking ahead to what your site might become – what additions might occur down the road. You’ll also want to think from the perspective of what terms your visitors might use and what structure will help support your business goals and help your content perform optimally. And, don’t forget to understand the scope of your project. Taxonomies can easily get out of hand.

To develop the scope of your taxonomy, imagine a Venn Diagram. The taxonomy lies at the intersection of your business context (or purpose), content and users – which are your target audience.

The Benefits of Structuring Your Own Taxonomy

Taxonomy can be a huge boon for your website. However, equally clear is that this is not something that can be built overnight. It requires strong input from both your multi-disciplined team and from your users. You have to thoroughly understand your target audience and have a good grasp on how they think. After all, you’re creating something that should be almost intuitive.

Taxonomy requires vision and commitment to plan and execute. Many companies don’t bother to standardize data definitions. Yes, it takes real time to properly define your data. But, the many benefits of having a taxonomy structure under your site are huge. Not only for your users but for your team. The many, many ways you can utilize such a structure are endless.

The post Taxonomy for design & Why Use It on Your Site? appeared first on Greenhouse Design Group.

or haven’t you heard of responsive design? Not only are laptops powerful enough to handle business needs, now people are using their phones, tablets, and a few enterprising souls swear by their iPods.

One-Size Websites are Losing Ground

It used to be that if you had a website, and if you were really savvy, you built a mobile version. That sort of ‘single use’ design is quickly losing popularity, and for good reason. Not only can the technical side be a nightmare, a lot of users aren’t fans either.

The solution can be Responsive Design, sometimes called Fluid Layout. Responsive Web Design means that a website has used CSS3 and HTML5. The server always sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device using media queries.

Not only is this better for user experience, there is also an SEO benefit. By encouraging webmasters to develop one cohesive web experience that adapts to the platform, Google is able to preserve many of its link algorithms and should be able to reduce or eliminate the burden of evaluating mobile and desktop versions separately. Google algorithms can automatically detect this setup if all Googlebot user-agents (both Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile) are allowed to crawl the page assets; CSS, javascript, and images.

Instead of regimented pixel widths or percentages, Responsive Design uses a fluid grid that manages elements in terms of proportions. And because end user needs are the name of the game, extra care is taken to ensure that the mobile user sees the most important elements first— without restricting access to the rest of the site features, as is the norm in mobile sites. Users are demanding as much access on their phones as they would have on their desktop.

Using responsive web design has multiple advantages, including:

• It keeps your desktop and mobile content on a single URL, which is easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to and for Google’s algorithms to assign the indexing properties to your content.
• Google can discover your content more efficiently as Google wouldn’t need to crawl a page with the different Googlebot user agents to retrieve and index all the content.

There’s plenty of evidence the web is going mobile, and the variety of web-accessible devices is exploding. It makes little sense to create different versions for different screen sizes. Take the time build it with usability and faster loading speedsin mind, and reap the benefits of higher engagement. Below are just a few sites you can visit for experimenting with responsive design.

• Twitter Bootstrap: Great toolset for building responsive sites and landing pages.
• Net Magazine: Check out Net Magazine’s top 50 tools for Responsive WordPress Design.
• Themeforest: WordPress templates with hundreds of responsive designs including reviews.

Have you ever been frustrated by the limitations of mobile websites? Have you used Responsive Design/Fluid Layout techniques? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!

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Guide To Create a Dream Blog

Here’s a quick look at the few simple steps you will need to run through in order to start your dream blog:

• Choose your blogging platform
• Get a domain name and set up your own web hosting
• Configure and design your blog
• Start producing content for your readers
• Marketing your blog

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of each step in the guide to help you start your first dream blog.

Step 1- Choose Your Blogging Platform
You first need to select a blogging platform so that you can get your content up onto the web. There are many open source platforms around for building your blog and they are supported by most web hosting companies. The main blogging platforms you can choose from are:

WordPress – is a massively popular blogging platform with countless plugins/add-ons and customizable content management system (CMS) offering superior features built for bloggers so that they have complete control over how their blog looks

Ghost – is the new kid on the blogging block and it has created a lot of buzz in the blogosphere

Drupal – is a popular blogging platform but it is difficult for novices

Joomla – has a great CMS but there is a steep learning curve involved
For those who want to avoid paying for a blogging platform – however small the cost—you can grab one for free from Blogger, WordPress.com or Tumblr. But before you take a decision, know that free blogs have downsides too, including:

• You won’t be able to get a custom domain name with many of the free blogging platforms, which can seem unprofessional to potential subscribers and customers.
• There are many limits to free blogs such as level of customization or available bandwidth for uploads. Moreover you will not be able to fully monetize your blog.
• With Blogger or Tumblr or the free version of WordPress you don’t actually own your blog and they can shut you down anytime without any prior warning. All your site content can be deleted with no way to recover it for even minor indiscretions such as using copyrighted images by mistake.

Step 2- Get a domain name and Set up Web hosting
Next you will need a domain name, which is the URL or the site address for your blog online. Every blog should have its own domain but it can be hard to find a domain name that isn’t taken! For your blog, choose a short name that can be easily remembered. Also consider its uniqueness and what the domain says about your brand. Do remember to take into consideration copyright and trademark factors when selecting your domain name.  Once you have a domain for your blog, you need to think of where your blog will be stored online. Selecting a reliable webhost is essential because this company will be responsible for putting your website up on the internet so that anyone online can see it. All the content for your blog will be saved on there. Investing a little money on domain registration and a good webhost will ensure that your site gets backed up regularly and you can recover your website for any reason. It is wise to get your domain registered from the same place that you get your blog hosted to save you from future headaches.

You can get your dream blog up and running with the VPS Hosting package from HostLabs at a super affordable rate of $44.95/mo. HostLabs offers fast and easy setup for WordPress installation, intuitive control panel for easy website file management and 24/7 technical support.  If you already have a domain registered, HostLabs will provide you with the necessary information to easily transfer your domain. You can install WordPress on your blog in just a few clicks through HostLabs and then make changes from the WordPress administrator area.

Step 3- Configure and Design Your Blog
Take your time to configure WordPress themes as it controls the look and feel of your blog. You do not need coding expertise or design knowledge to design your dream blog. WordPress theme is a pre-designed template for you to customize your blog exactly how you want it to look. There are two aspects to every theme: the framework and the design element. To make your blog standout in the crowded blogosphere, first impressions with an impressive design theme count for a lot. You may select from thousands of free themes available online, but investing in a premium theme can help improve your brand image. Additionally, they are secure, fast, easy to navigate, and responsive designed for both mobile and desktop. You will find that they are also easy to customize and install. You can find themes for your blog at Themeforest, StudioPress or the WordPress Library.

Installing your theme is even easier as it comes in a .zip file format and you can upload it direct to your WordPress Dashboard by logging into your WordPress blog. If it is a free theme, you can click Install on the preview screen of your WordPress dashboard. WordPress also allows you to switch themes or go back to your old theme with just a few clicks and without fear of losing any precious content or images.

WordPress allows you to install and use plugins through its dashboard to make your blog feature rich and more functional. Do keep your added plugins to a minimum and install just the best ones you need.

Step 4- Start Producing Content For Your Readers
The soul of a successful blog is in its writing. If no one wants to read your content then your blog will not get too many subscribers. The two main types of content that you can create for your blog in WordPress are ‘Pages’ and ‘Posts’. Pages are static pages that will not see much change and it helps link to and from your navigation area/menus on your blog, such as the ‘About Page.’ Regular posts are what appear on the front page of your blog, with comments and the date of publishing.

The aim of a blog is to ultimately provide valuable content that people actually want to read and share with their friends. To create great content, you need to put thought into more than just words. Blogs should not be huge block of text without any visual breaks (such as bulleted lists). Posts should include images or videos and you can use stylized fonts and colors to make your content stand apart from the rest.

Step 5- Marketing Your Blog
You may have setup your blog properly and published great content but this is no guarantee of anyone ever discovering it online. For your blog to grab more eyeballs, you need to promote your blog correctly. There are several methods you can utilize to properly market your blog including:

• Social networks– When you publish your blog post do make sure to post a link on your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account. Promoting your post on social media platforms improves your chances of getting more shares and you may also see an increase in traffic to your blog.
• Commenting on other blogs– You can access people with similar interest areas by leaving a comment on other related blogs with a link back to your own blog. Make sure not to abuse this method and only submit a useful comment to get people interested in wanting to learn more from your blog.
• Guest posting– You can also get readers of other blogs to hear about your blog by writing guest posts. Get in touch with other blog owners and offer to write a post for their site with a link to your blog.
• Online forums– Make sure you join popular online forums related to your topic to make helpful posts on the site. Most forums do allow you to post a link to your site in the signature at the bottom of every post you write. If your forum posts are high quality and informative, people will surely want to click on your blog to read more.

Now that you know the technical side of setting up your blog, let the fun times roll. There will be a lot of learning along the way but don’t let that overwhelm you. Welcome to the blogosphere and enjoy expressing yourself in your new blog.

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