Flash has made website design more interactive for the viewer, making it easier to view animations, videos, music, and other mediums. Flash helps viewer’s browsing experience more entertaining. Alternatively, viewers may also see it as an unnecessary distraction. Although using this Flash in websites have become more popular and common, making a full website in Flash can be difficult to be ranked high in search engines. So, depending on the type of content of your website, the use of Flash should really be used effectively and only when necessary. Outlined below are a set of advantages and disadvantages of using this tool for your website.

ADVANTAGES:

• Flash is cross-compatible and will be viewed in almost all web browsers, such as Firefox, IE, and Safari, guaranteeing that it will be viewed the way you intend it to be viewed.
• Flash is an excellent tool for creating animations, and a convenient solution for compressing these animations for quick web viewing.
• Video hosting websites such as YouTube and Google Video use Flash to stream videos quickly and conveniently, proving that it has become the best solution to show videos rather than using OS-dependent plugins like QuickTime and Media Player.
• If a web-design requires a special font to be used, Flash can embed the specific font into the Flash file, encoding it as an image and viewers will be able to view text in the desired font. This application cannot be guaranteed with HTML coding, for it requires the viewer to have the font installed in their system.
• Flash is not just a flashy graphic tool, but can also perform most of the same tasks as server-side scripts.

DISADVANTAGES:

• Flash applications and websites are time consuming and require the viewer to be patient while the file downloads. Even with pre-loader tools and Flash optimization, the viewer may be frustrated and not willing to wait to receive information from your website.
• Viewers needing to go the previous page do not have this application available on a Flash site. The ‘back’ button does not apply to Flash files and therefore, inconvenient for the viewer who must re-navigate their way through your website again.
• Flash is also accessibility impaired, and does not provide viewers with alternative text. So those who need to view text larger will have a harder browsing experience.
• Flash websites and applications have text and links embedded as Flash images, and therefore search engines will not read it. The result of this disadvantage is that the website will not be able to rank high in search engines.
• Although having Flash may be a more convenient solution as opposed to QuickTime or Media Player, it still requires the viewer to download and constantly update the Flash plug-in in order for the Flash file to show up on screen.

So when is it most effective to use the Flash application? Consider the content of your website and alternative methods of showcasing it. If you require interactivity with the viewer, with video, music or games, then Flash can be used effectively. However, there are certain aspects of your website that should stay away from Flash, such as the navigation of your website. If there is an error in your navigation, viewers won’t have access to the website at all. If you do decide to include Flash in your website, make sure there are alternative means of viewing it, whether it be making a mirrored website coded in HTML, or combining both HTML and Flash.

For more information on the best way to optimize your Flash website for SEO, click here .

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Selecting the right colour scheme for your website can be difficult. Ensuring the website is readable, cross-platform compatible, and aesthetically pleasing on screen, are factors that should be taken into consideration. However, you also want the website to have unique elements of design. In order to select the right colour scheme, you need to have a clear understanding of the colour wheel.
The colour wheel helps you mix and match colours in a harmonious fashion. It contains the three primary colours: red, blue and yellow, as well as the combination of how these three colours make up the secondary colours; green, purple and orange.

There are three fundamental colour schemes that can be applied to when selecting a website colour scheme.

Analogous - this colour scheme uses colours that are adjacent to each other on the colour wheel. Designing a website based on this colour scheme allows the layout to be consistent and harmonious. However, avoid combining colours that are too similar to each other, that the content of your website becomes camouflaged.

Complimentary - this colour scheme uses colours that are opposite to each other on the colour wheel. Designing a website based on this colour scheme makes the design bold and captivating, but at the same time contrast harmoniously without having colours clash with each other.

Monochromatic - this colour scheme uses the tints and shades of a pure colour. For example, add black or white to the colour red to make up a monochromatic colour scheme. Designing a website based on this colour scheme makes the design bold and consistent, and is perfect for building a strong brand identity.

Take caution when choosing colours that do not fit any of the three categories, often they clash and become strenuous to view, or give the design a blurred, murky effect. Remember that these are just guidelines on how to pick the right colour scheme for your website. Don’t forget to experiment and use your instincts to build up an eye for good colour schemes.

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Being .NET developers, we have always had the problem of rewriting URL’s. Websites hosted on an Apache web server have no problem as you have the use of the .htaccess file, a file which has many uses, including the ability to rewrite URL’s.

If you are not sure what URL rewriting is to begin with, it is the process of changing a URL’s appearance, usually to shorter and cleaner URL. The reason for doing this usually comes back to the topic of Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. URL’s that are shorter in length, are words rather then numbers, and are words that relate to the content of the page are not only going to benefit you massively through SEO, but the URL’s will be much easier for your users to remember and type in. There are many other uses and reasons to rewrite URL’s that people use however I won’t go into detail here.

Now back to my point of this post which is rewriting URL’s for a Windows server! We use a product called Isapi Rewrite, which gives you much of the ability that Apaches mod_Rewrite does however for a Windows server (IIS). Unlike Apaches mod_Rewrite Isapi Rewrite does come at a cost, although for around $100 USD it is well worth the investment. Once you have purchased and installed the product, you are then able to start URL rewriting.

One of our clients, homebuildingonline.com.au recently employed us to perform the internet marketing for their website. One section of their website sells building courses online, and like most shopping carts is built on the back of a database. Before we began our work, all of the course product URL’s looked similar to this:

www.homebuildingonline.com.au/cpd-courses.aspx?id=31

As you can see this URL is not only very hard to remember, but by looking at it you would not be able to tell what product it is linking to. What we did was rewrite the URL to be much more meaningfull and better for SEO, so what we rewrote the URL to was:

www.homebuildingonline.com.au/cpd-courses/novice-building-guide.aspx

You ask yourself which URL you would rather have.

Before I go I will give you one more quick example of what you can do using the software. This technique enables you to create multiple websites using one physical site, which obviously would save you money on hosting fees. Here is how you do it.

Suppose you have two domains that you own, www.mydomain1.com and www.mydomain2.com, and you want to host both sites using the one hosting account. You would simply add the following code to your httpd.ini file:

#Fix missing slash char on folders
RewriteCond Host: (.*)
RewriteRule ([^.?]+[^.?/]) http\://$1$2/ [I,R]

#Emulate site1
RewriteCond Host: (?:www\.)?mydomain1\.com
RewriteRule (.*) /site1$1 [I,L]

#Emulate site2
RewriteCond Host: (?:www\.)?mydomain2\.com
RewriteRule (.*) /site2$1 [I,L]

Then…. you simply have 2 folders in your root directory /mydomain1 and /mydomain2 and store the the two websites in each directory.

There are many other uses to the software then what I have described here, and full documentation can be found on the Isapi website.

Onpoint Creations performs URL rewriting for many clients, and if you need help or think you could benefit from the use of this software or, would like to speak with a staff member please contact us.

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Onpoint Creations are pleased to be working with Kirsty Lee Allan to launch her official website - KirstyLeeAllan.com

Kirsty Lee Allan is a local Australian born actor who now plays the role of ‘Bomber’ on the Australian hit drama Sea Patrol, which is now in it’s second season. The official website is currently being developed which will contain the latest information, news, photos and more.

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Onpoint Creations are pleased to have worked with Primary Program Plus or otherwise known as PPPlus - a primary school teacher resource web site that offers a range of teacher courses for sale online. When Primary Programs Plus approached us their site was in major need of a facelift, and there were a number of other things that needed to be done to the site, so we got to work.

As we wanted to give the site a new fresh feel, we started from the ground up and implemented a number of features that makes the site not only look better, but is easier to use and navigate. We also performed extensive internet marketing techniques that is already bringing great results.

Feel free to visit the new site at www.ppplus.com.au to see an example of our work on display. If you feel that your site too could do with an upgrade, call us today on 02 8003 4773.

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If you are a web designer or have ever tried to design a web site, you will no doubt come across the fact that one of a web designers biggest issues will be getting a web site consistent across all the major browsers. Many times I will visit a web site that works perfect in Internet Explorer, however when viewing it in another browser such as Firefox it does not work, or some parts are missing or there is some other issue. It happeneds the other way round too, with it working perfect in Safari on a Mac, but then on PC with with IE (Internet Explorer) there are problems. Onpoint Creations ensures that when we build a web site, it works across the major browsers, as everyone does not use the same browser.

So I thought I would share a little tip that can help iron out problems in IE. If you find that your site is working great in most browsers except IE, you can use a CSS IF statement what will apply different styles if the user is using IE to view the web page. For example:

In your webpage where you define your stylesheet, you can write this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="my-normal-style.css" />

<!--[if IE]>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="my-ie-style.css" />
<![endif]-->

What that does is it first defines your normal style sheet, but then if the user is using IE to view your page, it will use the IE specific stylesheet instead. You can even go far as to specify what version of IE they may be using. For example:

<!--[if IE 5.0]>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie-version-5.css" />
<![endif]-->

<!--[if IE 5.5]>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie-version-5.5.css" />
<![endif]-->

<!--[if IE 6.0]>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="ie-version-6.css" />
<![endif]-->

In most cases you are able to program your styles to work in all browsers, however sometimes (after pulling all your hair out) you can easily use this technique to fix your problems.

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A blog is a very simple, effective and powerful tool to have on your web site, no matter what your site may be about. If you asked me I would say that a blog should be mandatory for any company web site, as web 2.0 is here and a great way to embrace the technology is to start blogging.

In case you are unfamiliar with what exactly a blog is and how it works, just take a look around this page as you are reading a blog post right now. A blog really is an electronic version of keeping a hand written journal, and you are able to write entries or posts on anything you want. There are also many great standard features that come with a blog, including the ability for people to post comments and ask questions relating to your posts.

With a Onpoint Creations blog installed on your web site, you are able to easily log in to an admin section where you are able to write posts, and also have access to settings and category management. Any time that you have any new company news, an idea that you wish to share, or new product you would like to promote, you can log in and write about it. Once you save and publish the post it will automatically appear in your blog, for people to read and comment on. After time of writing regular posts, the blog will have massive benefits for your site that you are most likely currently unaware of. As posts are published, these new pages will be indexed by the search engines and most likely show up in search results which will lead to increased traffic for your site.

Creating a Community

Apart from the benefits of creating additional content for your site as described above, the biggest benefit of having a blog in my mind is the fact that you are building a community. Once your blog is well established, and providing you write about relevant topics that are well re-searched and well written, you should have a group of dedicated readers who visit and comment on your blog regularly. These people will basically use your site as a place to hang out and share feedback about your posts, and gives you the ability to directly communicate with these people. If you can communicate with these people selling them your services is going to be a breeze, as by this time they will trust you and respect your knowledge in your field.

There are many other benefits too such as being able to learn more about the people reading your blog by reading and taking note of the comments they post. As you can see it gives you leverage with your customer base that would be impossible otherwise.

Our Blog Design Service

Onpoint Creations to date have setup and installed many blogs for clients from a range of different industries, and have the experience to not only configure and design your blog, but also ensure it gets to a good start by writing relevant posts on well re-searched topics in order to gain instant traffic via search results. We also use a range of other tools that help actively promote your blog to make sure that anyone looking for it will find it.

If you are interested in starting your own blog, whether you already have a web site or not, give us a call now on (02) 8003 4773 for a free quote, or alternatively use our contact form here. We have the experience and knowledge in order to get you blogging today.

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If you often use flash content for your web sites, and have ever wondered about the best way to insert it, then the swfobject is it. The swfobject is a tiny javascript file that allows you to easily embed flash content onto your web page, with very little fuss and also has other great benefits. The code used is so much cleaner then the default Adobe flash embed script, and has benefits such as being HTML & XHTML compliant.

Apart from being able to detect the plugin in all major browsers, the thing I like about the swfobject the most is the SEO benefit. Using the swfobject alows you to insert alternate content (including text) that is only seen by either people who dont have flash installed and bots (search engines), so the content will be crawled. Using this technique you can also insert a screen shot of the flash file so people with flash not installed see a still image, instead of nothing.

Another great feature of the swfobject is a thing called ExpressInstall. With this enabled it allows users with an older version of flash installed to be able to upgrade their flash player without even leaving your site, which is a really cool feature to have, especially when the swfobject is completely free.

I could give examples here of how to use the swfobject, but the official swfobject site already has great examples, and a full list of the features and benefits, plus has the latest version to download as well, so check the site out here.

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If you have never heard of or used a Server Side Include (SSI) before, then you must read this post, as a Server Side Include is one cool way to insert content into your web page. When you use a Server Side Include the server takes the entire content of one file and places it onto your page, where you specify it. A Server Side Include would be used for such things as a navigation menu on a site, where the navigation menu is re-used on many or every single page. By using a Server Side Include, when you go to update the menu, you only have to update one file instead of every page that has the menu, makes sense huh?

I would recommend to use a Server Side Include where ever content is re-used across many pages. On many websites this includes the header, footer and navigation menu. A Server Side Include saves you serious time when you need to make a site wide change. You simply edit the include file, upload it the the change is automatically made site wide.

How to do it:

1. Select & copy the code from your web page that you wish to re-use across your site.
2. Create a file & past the code from step 1 into it. Name this file with the extension .htm, .html, .asp, .aspx or .php.
3. Select the file from step one, and insert this code into the area where the old code used to be (choose one depending on technology used):
4. PHP: <?php include(”./relative-path-to-document”) ?>
   ASP or SHTML: <!–#include file=”./relative-path-to-document” –>
5. Ensure that any pages with the code from step 3 ends in either .shtml, .asp, .aspx or .php. If you name the file ending in .html the SSI will not work.

You can click here to download a working example.

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Onpoint Creations are pleased to have launched Easy3StepSites.com, a brand new cheap web design builder that lets you build you own website in as little as 5 minutes.

For $149.95 you get your own domain name of your choice, a cool page layout with all your business / personal information, a contact page with a contact form, 10 professional email address, web stats, webmail, and a admin centre that enables you to change and update the information on your website! Not only do you get all this but the pages are also optimised for search engines, and you automatically get submitted to them so you should be found when someone searches your business name, or other phrases related to your field.

For a full list of all the features, and to buy your very own website visit Easy3StepSites.com now.

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