Website Technician

Sometimes you need to space thing on your site and don’t want to mess around with the CSS coding to accomplish the proper space requirement. In the past I have used line breaks to create vertical spacing. I have also used ascii spaces to create horizontal spacing.

No more, now I use a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent .gif file to do this work. Open your graphics editor and create a new image. Make the image a 1px x 1px file and leave it blank. When you start setting up a new file, be sure to have the background be transparent. Save the file as spacer.gif and upload it to your server.

When you need a vertical spacing then place the link to the file in your document and use the Height and width parameters to create the space.  For example if you need vertical spacing it would look like this:

<img src="http://www.you.com/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer" height="400" width="5" />

Need a bit of horizontal spacing:
<img src="http://www.you.com/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer" height="1" width="50" />

Try it out.

Steve

Here is the CSS parameters for setting up a simple table. I don’t know why they are disliked, especially when intended to keep everything tidy on a web page or blog post.

If you have more than one table, just add a class name, in this case .black. Then the table would start like this: <table class=”black”>

table.black{
margin: 10px 8px 10px 8px;
padding: 10px 8px 10px 8px;
table-layout: automatic;
text-align: Left;
font-family: Times New Roman;
font-size: 20px;
line-height: 110%;
word-spacing: 1px;
color: #FFEFC9;
}

That was fairly straightforward and are used on my tutorial here:
Click here to look at the page.

Then there is a need to use them in blog posts to keep everything tidy.

Like Here

If you have Excel, get a copy of my HTML generator(right sidebar, below). This is real handy if you use a shopping cart. It can generate a simple table like this one without a cart entry, or one that employs a cart.

Click image to enlarge.

Copper Pendant Item # sample, $45.00

Steve

I finally pulled everything together and funded my account at Media Traffic. As of this post I have had 2744 clicks on my keywords and URLs that I picked, and not one person actually completed the action. That is a ROI of 0.00%. My campaigns ranged from submitting an email address for a chance to win a $500 grocery card to links for selling houses online. Nada.

My current campaign is for Lunarpages web hosting. I simplified it up and have just 4 keyword phrases (Web Hosting, website hosting, Web host and domain hosting). Anyone in their network entering those keywords, in that order would get a pop-under window for this campaign:
Here is the Campaign

This campaign has had over 1000 clicks and no one made a purchase. I have limited the campaign to $10 per day, so I’m letting it run a few more days. My enthusiasm has waned. Off to another project.

At the end of my experiment, I had over 6000 clicks, based upon keyword searches, and not one sale. I spent $94 with no luck. My refund on the remainder of my deposit was returned yesterday.

Steve

If you have a blog as a web site or use a site builder, there is some basic HTML you should learn. This is a nice article at a web site that I find very useful. Sign up for their freebies and they will email you notifications for their webinars. If you can’t make the webinars, they will provide a video capture a day or two later to view on demand.

Lots of great resources here.

Hubspot Article

Steve

The Tutorial to the right is designed to show you how to use cPanel inside Lunarpages to set up your own WordPress Blog. The tutorial goes through the steps to install WordPress at your Lunarpages hosted site, Actually any host that uses cPanel.

Click here to see how easy it is to install a Blog as a Website.

Steve

Want to start an online business? It can be fairly easy to do, but will require a bit of work. How much work depends on a couple of factors. A traditional HTML based site requires a bit steeper learning curve than a WordPress Blog as a Web Site. The easiest approach to an HTML based site is to find one of the thousands of templates available, many totally free of charge. I have tools available to help set up a Wordpress Blog as a Website.

Domain Name

A domain name is your address on the Internet. The domain name to this site is www.WebsiteTechnician.com. I recommend you own your domain name, not tagging on to a free service that has control of your business. What if your business takes off, hundreds of customers bookmark the link to your site. If it is part of a free hosting site and that host folds up, you are out of business. With your own domain name, that name comes with you. Picking a domain name can be a bit of a science. If you are up on to speed Search Engine Optimization, you probably have key words that your site will emphasize. If a domain name is available using those key words, get it. One of my other sites targetes the kew words: Barbeque Sauce Recipe, but barbequesaucerecipe.com was taken, so I got barbequesaucerecipe.net. Had the .net had been taken I would have gone with a hyphen in there somewhere.

Hosting

I use and recommend Lunarpages for a web host. They run $4.95 a month hosting specials all of the time and they will give you a free domain name for life, as long as your account is with them. The domain name is registered to you and is completely portable. They also use cPanel for site management. I’ve built sites for friends using another famous host. That host had a confusing layer upon layer of things to navigate just to get to some simple feature like adding email addresses. Lunarpages also includes $700 worth of free software. The best software there is Logo Creator by Laughingbirdsoftware. My logo above was made with it. There are a couple of other items there worth getting.

Another big plus for Lunarpages is the Unlimited bandwidth they allow. This is huge, allowing the use of embedded videos with no worry of extra fees associated with exceeding bandwidth limits.

Click here to check out Lunarpages for yourself

Payment Processor
Okay, now that you have your domain name and hosting, you will need to have a payment processor that will take payments for you.  The only way to go here is with PayPal. Almost everyone buying things online uses it, so there is no need to fight that trend by using something else. If you are just selling one or two items you can use PayPal’s ‘Buy It Now’ buttons and you are in business. If you have a lot of different things to sell I would recommend Mal’s eCommerce. I use their free shopping cart service and have a guide to setting it up. I even offer a free button code generator if you have Excel.

Using these building blocks, you can get a business started fairly quickly.  Promote it by adding good content and then get the word out. Try using SocialMarker.com or Traffic Bug to spread the word. There is a list of bookmarking sites there that you will need to set up accounts with, but that goes quickly.
Steve

Lunarpages is offering hosting for $4.95 per month with free domain name for the life of you account, this is $24 per year less than the usual fee. You can lock this price in for up to 2 years. (30 day money back guarantee)

Having Unlimited Bandwidth is huge, allowing you to host video content without fear of additional fees. Videos are exploding in popularity and are an important part of SEO and marketing your products.

Click on the Lunarpages banner on the right to take advantage of this offer, and to see what you get with signing up. One of the freebies is Logo Creator, Click here to visit their site. I created the logo at the top of this site using Logo Creator

Steve

How about a Blog as a Web Site.

Click on the photo below the Free Tutorial link on the right to get your .pdf document that takes you through every step necessary to having your own site without the headache of learning HTML. Most sites link to a blog from a traditional HTML or PHP page. You can skip that and go directly to installing a user friendly blog as your site.

The File has 12 steps that link to images and videos that simplifies the process into easy understandable steps.

If you have been thinking about your own site, now there is a great way to get started, and this is where you begin.

The .pdf files requires an Adobe Reader. Get yours free from Adobe
Click here to get your Adobe Reader.

Steve