Check out the new look for California Street Music!

CalStreetMusic.com

Our latest site site development is Vagrant Skateboards,a small skate company out of California. Their inventory may be small but watch it grow as they add more skate decks to their inventory in the coming months. They also got a kick ass team kicking!

We provided the design and integrated WordPress and an e-commerce section. Hope to continue working with them in the future.

VAGRANTSKATEBOARDS.COM

Email is a sticky subject matter. You cannot just blast a few hundred people from your GMail or Yahoo account. There are rules you must play by if you plan on using email as marketing tool. You have to consider the mail server you are using/abusing. Having SPF or domain key in place. IP Reputation.There are a number of items to consider in order to stay reputable with ISPs you plan on sending emails to.

For a growing site or a small business site Feedburner is a great service for your email/RSS feeds. For one thing, it’s FREE. For another, you do not have to worry about coughing up the costs for a reliable email service provider… yet. When you reach a certain size you will eventually need their service for reliable email deliverability. But for now Feedburner is a great alternative. You can easily place a subscription form on your site in order for readers to use. Then every time you create that new post they will get an email.

As long as you play nice and within Feedburner’s rules and the Can Spam Act it can be a very effective tool to let your readers know when there is new content available. Check it out NOW!

Also, I am not a copy writer though I can assist.

I say these things because time and time again I try to push to get content from clients before actually working on a layout. Some times I do get the content upfront. Other times I do not. Depending on how much you want to say on your website depends on where everything gets spread across the website. When you provide the content before planning of the layout it can help in a number of ways:

1. As you physically start to put pen to paper it helps to jump start that creative side of your brain. You may have had one initial direction you wanted to go in with your content but as you began writing you hit a spark. Next you began seeing your content flow in a different direction. Maybe it from a general info-mercial tone to a fairy tale theme.

This always happens to me almost all the time. As I have one ideal and begin brain storming and more and better ideals follow.

2. When you provide your data it really helps in creating the mock layout before we start laying down some code. We can then properly and effectively position content instead of trying to fill space.

For example, you want to provide a coupon for print. Do we want to have it on all pages? The home page? Knowing how you want to target you audience is key.

Content is not just words. It’s guidance overall.

3. News and blogs post. They’re good to have. New content helps in gaining your search rankings with search engines. You can’t just write a one word posts but a fair paragraph or so. Also, it’s just good to have to inform your visitors of the latest events going on.

4. Nobody knows the objective of your website better than you!

I once was begging a client to provide me content for his website. He simply pointed me to his competitor’s website and told me to copy his website and change the wording a bit.

True story!

Also, NO. I will not do copy content from another website.

I prefer you provide the content and tell me about yourself. I can definitely help with the wording but it helps to have some content before hand. I am not asking for a novel. Just enough to get the creative gears spinning.

So, keep that in mind. Work on your content. Work on your posts. Let’s get people reading your site!

Knock-out hails from Riverside, California. They’re a band that plays their blend of ska, punk, and rock music. It’s good stuff and just awesome stuff to just chill to.

Jared, the front-man for band, contacted me for some web help. I agreed and the result is knockoutrocks.com. Check it out and leave comment for the band. They’re still trying to get used to WordPress.

Expect to see more of the Voodoo Glow Skulls later this year. Until then check out the their stop motion music video The Ballad of Froggy McNasty:

Well, the Buzz came and the Buzz fizzled fairly fast. It was really more like Buzz.

I logged on to try it out in its first week. I’ll admit that I did not toy with it long. Yet, I think it was a long enough to realize I was not awe struck. Or amused. Or entertained in anyway. It just didn’t work for me or to others I have talked to who tried it. I know this was Google’s way to try to steal Facebook’s thunder but I think most people are pretty content on sticking with them than the Buzz. For one thing who wants to join another social network? Who wants to join another social network and try to re-establish with people they already have established  in Facebook? And again, who wants to join another social network? Most people I believe do not. Just to clarify I did not take an official poll or anything. Just an assumption over a pint of beer.

In the end I disabled the Buzz. It wasn’t really worth trying after a day or so of toying with it. Building another friends list just seemed tiresome. The experience hasn’t dampened the Google name though. They are still quite awesome in many other ways. For example, search. They’re still my primary place to go for search. Besides I still love pressing I’m Feeling Lucky. It’s always pretty damn interesting the result.

Shared web hosting is common and the much more affordable than a dedicated web server. The average price for shared web hosting can be as cheap as $5 a month. Though it may be affordable it does come at a price.

As previously mentioned shared web hosting also means shared resources of the web server. So, if you’re using the web host’s mail server, that too is shared with other users. So, is the database server and file server. If they become compromised or black listed that may affect your site. I’m not saying this will happen. A web host is not in business because they do not realize the dangers. But the web is ever changing and so are today’s hackers. So, do your homework and see which web hosting company out there has the best service and support.

So in simpler terms you use FTP via the internet in order to upload/copy your website to the web hosting server.