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Howd You Get That Font?

Trisha — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:19:30 +0000

Using CSS3 to Embed New fonts in Your Website.

If you’ve been tooling around web design and developer sites lately, you may have noticed a strange phenomenon. Nice fonts. Much nicer than the default web fonts, and no, they’re not images. I know from the 100 times I’ve selected the text muttering ‘wow thats cool’. We’re no longer stuck in what I’ve heard humorously termed as ‘arial hell’.

Until now, this was about it for web safe font usage:

Arial, (mac: Helvetica)

Arial Black, (mac: Gadget)

Comic Sans MS

Courier New

Geneva

Georgia

Impact (mac:Charcoal)

Lucida Console, (mac:Monaco) 

Lucida Sans Unicode, (mac:Lucida Grande)

Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua

Tahoma, (mac:Geneva)

Times New Roman

Trebuchet MS, (mac:helvetica)

Verdana

Enter @font-face

@font-face is an actual css rule created years ago to embed fonts on a web page. It wasn’t supported by browsers until recently. Now Mozilla and IE support font embedding. I’ve tested in FireFox 3.5 and IE7. It works in both, though I feel IE’s a tad sluggish.

This is a huge step for online typography. Now when clients ask ‘Can we do something about those ugly fonts?” you can say, YES! yes we CAN! It’s a bright day in the web design world. To embed beautiful fonts, all you need is the right font formats and the CSS to get it done.

I’m all about handy tools to make life easier, so let’s head over to FontSquirrel where they have prebuilt ALOT of @font-face kits. This way we know the fonts are legal for your site (check the license for other uses) and the code is already written.

A peek at just a few of fontSquirrels font-face kits.

Since they provide little how-to, I’ll give you a quick walkthrough.
(W3 Documentation for @font-face)

The files.

-Your kit comes with all the fonts needed, in the following extensions:

.woff Web Open Font Format (mozilla)
.eot Embedded Open Type (microsoft)
.svg Scalable Vector Graphics (XML web graphics iphone)
.ttf standard TrueType font

-It comes with an external style sheet which defines your fonts for the browser. (stylesheet.css)

-And it comes with on-page example classes to control the size and line height. (in demo.html)

Lets plug it in.

Extract the files into a folder and upload them to your server. I called my new folder ‘fonts’ and put it inside my wordpress themes folder. I kept it simple and left stylesheet.css in the same directory as the fonts.
Open the file that contains your websites tags (index.html in most cases… header.php in your wordpress themes folder)
Include the following code inside the head tag (given in demo.html – make sure to use the correct path to the file)
Style your new font with CSS. (example classes given in demo.html)
its a simple switch.
say my h1 style was written this way…
h1 {font-family: Arial, sans-serif;}
Add the font-family defined in stylesheet.css like this:
h1 {font-family: 'DroidSansRegular', Arial, sans-serif;}

Thats all there is to it. Do it once and you’ll be a pro! And you can download them all, they’re free!

Other options and some history:
Replacing fonts for the web used to require much code. sIFR has been around for a while and I give them serious props for making it work. Looking into the code, I had to pass because frankly, its complicated. It uses javascript to call flash to redraw the fonts. And with all that code, page load time suffers. If the visitor doesnt have javascript or flash? They see the default.

Cufon is much easier to understand and implement and does a nice job. Their generator converts fonts to the correct format and there’s a nifty wordpress plugin. Less code means faster page loads but be aware of where your fonts are coming from and if you’re allowed usage on your website. Wouldn’t want license violations. You might even want to do some of your own comparison testing to see which loads faster, cufon or @font-face

Happy TypeFacing!

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SEO WordPress in 3 Minutes

Trisha — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 07:50:39 +0000

With the right plugins, you can optimize WordPress in 3 minutes. please excuse my utter lack of video skill, i didnt realize how hard it is to talk and work at the same time!

watch the high quality, full screen version on vimeo.

Here are the plugins:
All In One SEO Pack
Google XML Sitemaps
Related Posts by Category
UPDATE: heres another related posts that might work better
Contextual Related Posts
WP Easy Archives is no longer available. If it is, i cant find it.

Comment with questions and I’ll explain in more detail

Happy SEOing!

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Stuck on Copywriting?

Trisha — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:59:03 +0000

Try these Free Copywriting Videos!

Ok, so people have been asking about web design services. I figured I’d take a shot at writing a sales page. Im no writer and thats fine, but a little help getting my point across would be helpful… I started looking into it.

If you want to learn something, you try to learn from the best, right?

Copyblogger.com tipped me off to John Carlton who is proclaimed to be the best in copywriting. I’m following his material now. So far it looks like winning stuff. He’s teaching his 17 step system that one of his students says is “freaky” how well it works. Id like to see more and try it out before I recommend anything to spend real money on.

In the meantime, I found you guys some free videos. Not as much finesse as John Carlton’s, but the basics are there. It’s Copywriting for Promotional Emails, but it translates easily to salespage copy. The site requires a sign up (sorry), but i think its worth it. they’re pretty good videos.

you know they say just a little copywriting know-how can make a big difference!

best of luck
and happy writing!

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Social Networking Platforms

Trisha — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:27:36 +0000

I love open source. A bunch of developers working out their latest programming skills for everyone to share. Anyone who wants to learn new code has a free opportunity to learn from some of the most cutting edge guys.

I’ve been researching open source social network platforms trying to find, well basically the next wordpress of social apps… It’s not very apparent to me which is the most popular platform. Even with wildly popular social sites like myspace, facebook, social networking is still in its infancy in the open source. But where theres a demand, there is supply… and people talking about it.

I’ve been looking at new platforms along the lines of membership, classroom and/or social networking. I dont know if you’ve been through the internet marketing guru slam, but it’s interesting to get inside their programs and see how they have things set up. I just finished up a month with PPC Classroom, a go-at-your-own-pace online course to learn the in’s and outs of Pay Per Click. A very viable internet marketing method, but somewhat risky for the little guy.

A look inside this bad boy had my mouth watering to learn programming once again. They had segmented learning modules according to a course plan, with embedded video for better understanding. At the end of each segment, they integrated quizzes, where a passing score was required to move on to the next segment. It was automated and also saved student data. Way sheik. And to add the finishing touch, as soon as the forum opened up, it really started to feel like a community very quickly. If you wanted to learn pay per click, you couldn’t have asked for a better learning environment.

Justin Brookes SiteFlipAcademy, sadly no more, had an excellent 2.0 style membership platform. (I stand corrected, read Justin’ comment below) This was a video learning environment with a super user friendly interface and ultra fast page loads. His info was easy to learn, quick to put into action, and it actually worked. I made money flipping websites and templates. The marketplace for mere templates kinda ebbed right now, but Justin Brooke is the man! I highly recommend getting on his list. His site is at sitefling.com

SiteRev5 is a community driven free membership networking site. I found it when I was flipping sites. One thing I dont like about social sites and blogs is that they’re so cluttered and difficult to use. No so with SiteRev5. Their layout is easy to navigate with a lot great information, submitted by knowlegable members. If the market returns for siteflippers, I’ll be the first one back to this site.

So while considering a new platform, I wanted to integrate the following things. A way to present information in the fast loading 2.0 style platform with uncluttered pages. And I want people to be able to sign up, with an easy way to communicate with those subscribers.

WordPress a fantastic way to present info, and communicate with feeds, but it gets confusing at the subscriber stage. Also, any social abilities outside of commenting would require a forum. Not a big deal, but I’ve seen better ways to put it all together.

I’ve also looked through straight social networking platforms and picked the top 3 most talked about.

Elgg.org winning the BOSSIE award for “Best Open Source Social Networking Platform 2008″ comes in on top. Seems to be the easiest to use as well.

PHPizabi.net is a close 2nd. Seems more powerful, but looks much harder to work with.

People Aggregator is probably the best all in one solution. Easy to use, with more power. To me, it looks difficult to customize. As a designer, that’s kind of important to me.

I’ve also looked into content management with membership and communication ability. Joomla immediately comes to mind, but after a week inside Joomla I never wanted to look at another CMS again.

Since Pact publishing announced Drupal as the winner of the 2008 Open Source CMS Award, its time to dig a little deeper. Drupal known for community building capabilities. Its easy to install, set up and create content with. Templates are clean and easy to customize. Member signup and user control is rock solid. And there’s a lot of documentation if I have questions.

Some things out of the box that I dont see: Nicely optimized urls for SEO (default story is http://site.com/node/1) Drupal says URLs can be customized. Also, I’d like a way to contact my subscribers, preferrably by email. There are a few mail modules to add on which should do the job. All in all this is a great solution for a membership and community sites.

With a little help, Drupal goes all the way. Im learning to custom design better navigation and also learning the taxonomy. Will have some more info on that soon. In the meantime, Acquia has a great modules for drupal including an rss aggregator, forums, comments, contact forms, user profiles, polls, and also fixes the SEO problem for urls.

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You Down with ROI? video

Trisha — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 06:20:59 +0000

I’d never heard of Gary Vaynerchuk before I was sent a link to this video. I wont forget him now, This rant is fantastic… ROI. Return on marketing Investment of your advertising dollar. Traditional media advertising is incredibly expensive and doesn’t provide nearly the rate of return you can derive from strategic internet marketing campaigns in 2008 and beyond.

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Traffic Woes? 21 Ways to Drive

Trisha — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:01:56 +0000

A lot of internet beginners hit a wall when it comes to traffic. I’m sure you’ve seen countless questions across the internet of newcomers asking… How do I get traffic? I’ve hit that same wall on my internet journey as well.

And my answer to that question, especially when I think back to when I started is… write down all the ways to get traffic, and go through that list every single day.

These days there are so many more methods to get traffic than there was when I started, but the idea is the same. Promote like crazy! Every single day do as many tasks from your list as you possibly can. Once you’re done building, promote and drive traffic. Thats it. Use your stats to see where people are going and how long they’re hangin around, and of course, measure your success in click-throughs and sales. Then make your changes (ONE AT A TIME! or split test) and keep promoting. So what are the 21 ways???

I think a repost of Steven Pierce’s 21 ways to drive traffic to your website is called for here. Looking at his list, I believe he hasn’t missed a thing…

Blog Traffic
Directory Traffic
Forum Traffic
Article Traffic
Joint Venture Traffic
MySpace Traffic
eZine Traffic
Pay-Per-Click Traffic
Classified Traffic
Squidoo Traffic
Search Engine Traffic
Banner Traffic
Craigslist Traffic
eBay Traffic
Facebook Traffic
Social Network Traffic
Podcasting Traffic
Social Shopping Traffic
YouTube Traffic
Link Traffic
Press Release Traffic

Of course you don’t have to do ALL of these to get good traffic. That would take forever. ugh. Pick a few that sound the most appealing to you, at least 4 and do them every single day and watch your stats grow!

Best of Luck and
Happy Promoting!

P.S. How to use ALL 21 of these traffic methods listed by Steven Pierce!

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Email Subscribers from Wordpress

Trisha — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:53:40 +0000

Looking to connect with your subscribers? There’s no perfect solution for every blog, but here are some good options ranging from simple, free choices to powerful paid services.

If you merely want to send an email when you update your blog, FeedBurner is the way to go. They give you a nice signup form code that gives your visitors options for signing up.

Email Users is probably the simplest email plugin, and seems to do the job. It picked up my existing subscribers from the database and sent an email.

Very nice. But its lacking some power. It doesn’t keep a log of what was sent, to whom and when.

Some plus features: Choose by users or groups. Choose one subscriber at a time, or all of your subscribers. Email according to WordPress’ built in ‘roles’ (subscriber, contributor, author, etc), theyre called user groups here. And yes, it also updates your subscribers with new blog posts in their email. Being able to organize your subscriber into roles has interesting possibilities.

The Email Users plugin could do the trick if you need something quick and lightweight that actually works.

I didnt see any screen shots out there, so i took these:

But what about MORE POWER? Logging emails, or even an autoresponder?

Sequential auto-responders are da bomb! Write out a series of emails that go out as people sign up. When someone subscribes, they start at email number 1. Set the number of days to wait to send Email #2 , and so on. Also blast out emails whenever you choose, even while your autoresponder is running. These are great for teaching email courses, definitive marketing plans or splitting up lots of information. But are there any good plugins for WordPress? I’ve been keeping track.

GWA Autoresponder does pretty darn good for a free plugin.

Some plus features: Double Opt-in to keep yourself safe from spam accusations. Pre-write your sequential emails and add the signup form widget in the sidebar. It keeps a list of subscribers in its own database. Its Free!

There’s a pro version that offers more features, like multiple lists and such, but I think it’s been discontinued. Theres no way to upgrade, even from inside wordpress. Word of advice, while using the free version… keep your subscriber list backed up!

GWA screenshots:

Another option is a paid service, the industry standard AWeber. The power comes from the AWeber database, so you’ll be doing most of your newsletter work in your account on their site. There’s tons of support, email marketing advice and killer tools including SWEET looking signup forms.

Some plus features: Schedule emails by date, or in a sequence. Unlimited emails and email campaigns. HTML Templates ready to go. STABILITY! A ‘blog broadcaster’ that turns your RSS feed into emails. Email Stats. Shopping Cart Integration. and a WordPress Plugin.

AWeber Screenshots:

If you have a big marketing campaign to go out by email and need the power of a paid service, AWeber is your best choice.

Right now they’re having a $1 trial for the first month. SWEET!

Happy Emailing!

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