Articles

lotta nieminen

One of the 20 nominated designers under 30 years old!

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Lotta Nieminen is a graphic designer and illustrator living and working in Helsinki, Finland. She studied graphic design and illustration at the University of Art and Design Helsinki (2005-2009) and the Rhode Island School of Design (2007).
HuiputHer work has won honourable mentions at Vuoden Huiput (Best of Finnish advertising and graphic design) as well as in various logo competitions (Aalto Univeristy, divided 2nd prize ; Maritime center Vellamo, 2nd prize ; Nuorisomerkki, 1st and 3rd prize).
She has worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator since 2006. As an illustrator, she’s represented by illustration agency Agent Pekka.

lota

Featured in US based Print Magazine‘s
New Visual Artist 2010 review, as one of the 20 nominated designers under 30 years old!

How do you get traffic to your newly launched web site?

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“If you build it, they will come” is not necessarily true on the Web. Putting a website up is one thing, but getting visitors to come to your site is another. The process becomes even more difficult if you have limited resources to market your business.

Here are some shoestring marketing ideas that can help you get the visitors you need at the least cost possible:

1. Create the best content you can with the best products you can possibly offer. Your content is your best advertisement – if visitors love your content, then they will go back and spread the word to others.

2. Make it easy for users to recommend your site. Viral marketing is very important — and easy to tap on the Web. But give your users the tools. Get a Recommend this Site script from websites such as cgiscripts.com and similar directories of scripts. Some even go as far as giving incentives to those who recommend the site to their friends. If only 10 people go to your site, but these 10 people invite 10 more – that’s additional traffic that you get for FREE!

Recommend Site Scripts (various) http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Website_Promotion/Recommend_Site/
Big Nose Bird Recommend this Site http://bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtml
CGI Resource Index http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Website_Promotion/Recommend_Site/
Hostscripts http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Site_Recommendation/index.html

3. Rank well in the search engines (organic search results, not the pay per click). SEs can be a big source of traffic. The key is to create the best content in your niche. If you have good content, other websites will gladly link to you and offer your site as a resource to their audience. Check the on-page factors and be sure to get linked from authority sites in your topic area.

If you are going to read only one piece on search engine optimization, I suggest you read Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld.com’s “Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone: 26 steps to 15k a day.” http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm

SEO for Google http://www.powerhomebiz.com/052006/google.htm
SEO for Yahoo! http://www.powerhomebiz.com/052006/yahoo.htm
SEO for MSN http://www.powerhomebiz.com/052006/msn.htm
Tying It Together: SEO For The Big Three http://www.powerhomebiz.com/052006/seo.htm

4. Send out press releases. While outfits charge as much as $650 per release, there are free press release submission places on the Web. Press releases allow you to (a) attract media attention; (b) get more back links to your website without sending each website an email request; and (c) get more visibility especially if your press release gets in Google News or Yahoo News. My website (see my profile) accepts free press release submission (no strings attached!)

5. Submit articles. Write articles and submit them to websites accepting author submissions. You get exposure for your business; establishes you as an authority in your field, and allows you to get backlinks for your website. If 50 websites publish your article and it contains a link back to your website, then you easily get 50 links from a single article. The more links you have, the greater your chances for increasing your search engine rankings.

Here is a comprehensive list of where to submit your articles http://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=AhzreGmnCUicOoyedqypscUjzKIX?qid=1006022407481

6. Improve your conversion. Getting visitors is one thing; getting them to buy your products is a whole different story. Read the article “10 Ways to Convert Visitors to Buyers” http://www.powerhomebiz.com/072005/conversion.htm for tips on how to improve your conversion rates.

7. Post a link to your site for free where it is allowed (always read the Terms of Use). Examples are:

Craigslist http://www.craigslist.com
Google Base http://base.google.com
Classifieds for Free http://www.classifiedsforfree.com/...
Text Link Exchange http://www.txtswap.com/
Recycler.com http://www.recycler.com/
Yahoo Classifieds http://classifieds.yahoo.com/
US Free Ads http://www.usfreeads.com/

How to Redirect a Web Page

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301 Redirect

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It’s not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option. The code “301” is interpreted as “moved permanently”.

You can Test your redirection with Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection

IIS Redirect

  • In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
  • Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.
  • Enter the redirection page
  • Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”
  • Click on ‘Apply’

ColdFusion Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-url.com”>

PHP Redirect

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.new-url.com/”
%>

ASP .NET Redirect

<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.new-url.com”);
}
</script>

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.new-url.com/” );
response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” );
%>

CGI PERL Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(“http://www.new-url.com/”);

Ruby on Rails Redirect

def old_action
headers[“Status”] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.new-url.com/”
end

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

How to Redirect HTML

Please refer to section titled ‘How to Redirect with htaccess’, if your site is hosted on a Linux Server and ‘IIS Redirect’, if your site is hosted on a Windows Server.

Google Webmasters Tool and Its Importance

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All of us as website owners and search engine marketers have always wanted to know “How exactly Google sees our website”. This information can be found in Google support tries to help webmasters diagnose errors and enhance their website’s search engine visibility.

Google webmaster tools list the preferences on how website listings are handled.

Before you can start with any of these you will to sign up for your Google account. After signing up log into the following page https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Verification of Ownership

You will have to verify your ownership of your website that you would like to control using Google webmaster tools. You will have to enter the URL of your website and follow the instructions provided to verify the ownership of your website. This can be done in two ways, one is by uploading a blank HTML file with a specified name and the second method is by pasting a Meta tag provided by Google webmaster tools in the Header part of your homepage. Once you upload your blank HTML page or add the Meta tag, click verify.

This will allow Google to verify quickly that you are the authentic owner of the website that you are trying to control using Google webmaster tools.

The Overview

Once verified, you will be able to see your website’s profile in the Google webmaster tools control panel. You just need to click on the URL of your website whose profile you would like to view under the Manage section. This will take you to the overview page. You will find highly crucial information on your website that will give you great insights into the nature of your website’s traffic. You will also find links to specific webmaster tools in this section.

Diagnostics Tools

The function of these tools is to tell you whether there are any errors in your website as seen by Google when it crawled your website. You will normally find errors such as 404 errors, pages not indexed by Google robots.txt and other indexing issues.

Some of the common types of errors can be listed under the headings such as HTTP errors, URLs not followed, URLs disallowed by robots.txt, not found, URLs timed out, and Unreachable URLs. To ensure that your website is without any error, you must regularly check your diagnostics reports.

Statistical Tools

Google has amazing statistical tools that you can use to improve your marketing efforts. Google webmaster statistical tools include the following:

Top Search Queries

Every webmaster would like to know the top search query through which visitors get in to their website using Google Search. You will be able to see list of keywords for which the highest number of visitors came to your website. One of the most important pieces of information that you will find here is that your position in the SERPs for a particular keyword. There may be minor variation in the indicated number and actual position however, this will get better with time.

What Googlebot Sees

This is one of the best ways of learning how other websites link to your website . You can find three sections here.

  • Phrases used in external links to your website,
  • Keywords in your site’s content
  • The actual content on your website in terms of keyword density
  • Crawl Stats

Here you will be able to learn about your website’s pagerank strength. You can see your pages categorized in terms of low, medium, high and not yet assigned. Most often you will find your pages categorized under low but do not get discouraged. Another useful piece of information here is pagerank information of specific pages, which is updated on monthly basis. This is one of the best ways of measuring the effectiveness of your specific link building efforts.

Index Stats

Here you can find advanced Google queries on your website that used some search operators. This includes the following operators site:, link:, cache:, info:, related:, etc.

Subscriber Stats

This particular tool will help you find the status on your RSS feed subscribers. This is one of the new additions to the toolbox and is certainly useful when you are using feed management systems.

Links

This is where you can learn about your website’s internal and external link popularity status. Though this tool is a very limited in terms of the information provided, it will certainly be helpful information when you are trying to work on your website’s online exposure.

Google Sitemaps

This is one of the basic and oldest Google webmaster tools. In fact all the Google webmaster tools were built around Google sitemaps tool. This will help you to manage your sitemap files that are Google specific. You will be able to upload XML files, which will help Google to crawl your website completely.

Tools

The tools area in Google Webmaster Tools is the most resourceful sections. You can find the following tools under this section:

Analyze robots.txt

Robots.txt is a protocol meant for googlebot, which will tell Google how they should go about crawling your website. You can give instructions to googlebot in this file. You can control the crawling of Googlebot to the desired parts of your website as well as block the search engines from crawling certain parts of your website.

Analyze robots.txt tool will help you check the validity of your robots.txt file. Even a small mistake in this file can cost your website’s ranking dearly. So better take advantage of this tool to ensure that everything is in place.

Site Verification Management

This section will help you change the options on your site verification. You will also be able to secure your website. This is highly helpful when you are using a SEO company to handle your webmaster tools. Once you terminate their services with them, your information will still be available to them. Using this site verification area, you can block unauthorized entries to your website.

Crawl Rate

Here you will be able to get Google’s activity on your website and their indexing frequency. If you really want to benefit from this section, you will have to select adjust crawling speed feature.Here are few useful tips on how you can benefit from the activity graphs.

You will have to remember here that will be limited toa 90 day span. You can see variations in the graph based on your website update frequency. Check the graphs closely and compare it with your website activity. You will also be able to measure the effectiveness of your link building efforts. You can see spikes in the graph if your link building efforts have really been effective. The aim here is to make sure that Google is visiting your website frequently and interacting with your website actively. This is important to get new content in your website indexed fast.

Set Preferred Domain

If you do not want your page rank and the effectiveness of your link building efforts diluted between www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com, you need to tell Google which will be your canonical URL or which will be your preferred URL. This will have definitive impact on your website’s ranking. Google will display the right URLs based on what you have instructed it in this section. Never ignore this section; not many people realize the importance of this section.

Enhanced Image Search

One of the ways of enhancing your website’s online presence is by getting yourself included in the image search. When you select enhanced image search you will be able to gain control on labeling images in your website. You can also make use of Google image labeler to help improve image relevancy. You can find Google image labeler at http://images.google.com/imagelabeler.

Remove URLs

If there are pages removed in your website in your latest update, you should remove those pages from Google indexing. You will be able to do this easily using the remove URLs tool.

Concluding Remarks

When you invest enough time understanding each of the tools available in Google webmaster tools, you will certainly be able to benefit a great deal. All these tools after all are F.R.E.E. for use. Google even allows users to download important information regarding their website. You can set automatic download schedules to have your statistics downloaded. The best download schedule suggested is once in 60 days as Google provides information once in 90 days. When you set 60 days download, you will have overlapping data to interpret the information better.

The data gathered here can be used in multiple ways to gain valuable insights regarding your website’s online performance.

Website for sale!

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Are you looking to expand your portfolio? Maybe you want a fresh start in a new niche? Or maybe your website isnt the type of website that generates sales … Maybe you dont even own your own website yet …
Mesure your website cost by http://bizinformation.org/us/. Very useful tool for North American web developers!

Art of Philip Straub

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2-phil_straubBallistic Publishing and Philip Straub take the fantasy graphic novel to the next level with their latest release, Utherworlds.

Utherworlds combines a fantasy novel with written and spoken languages, maps, and stunning paintings in a large format that shows Phil Straub’s artwork like never before.

Website:

Skins:

About Phil Straub

As an Art Director, Philip Straub has worked with some of the biggest names in the gaming industry including: Vivendi Universal; Electronic Arts; NCSoft; and Big Fish Games. Philip’s work has appeared in over 30 childrens’ books, and he has co-authored three digital art tutorial books including d’artiste Digital Painting.

In the entertainment industry he has worked with many clients including: Mattel; Fisher Price; Disney; Universal Studios; Warner Bros; DC Comics; and Knowledge Adventure.

He also teaches an annual online Concept Art class to students around the globe. Philip is a founding member of The CGSociety and regularly contributes to the illustration and digital art communities by judging illustration competitions including: The Society of Illustrators; PAINTER; EXPOSÉ; and CG Challenges hosted by The CGSociety.

Philip’s licensed designs appear on a variety of products including: books; games; wall murals; scrap-booking; gifts; stationery; apparel; and textiles. As a freelance illustrator his work has appeared on: broadcast media; book jackets; CD and magazine covers; trading cards; feature films; and advertising campaigns.

Rich illustrated books:

Weblog for illustrators, artists, cartoonists

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illustrators sorce

Drawn! is a collaborative weblog for illustrators, artists, cartoonists, and anyone who likes to draw. Visit us daily for a dose of links and creative inspiration.

Contributors: S.britt, Jared Chapman, Matt Forsythe, Jaleen Grove, Meg Hunt, David Huyck, Ward Jenkins, Luc Latulippe, John Martz, Leif Peng, Jay Stephens, Patricia Storms

Also recommended sources:
100 Years of Illustration, ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, BibliOdyssey, Booooooom!, Cartoon Brew, Comics Reporter, Drawger, Grain Edit, Gurney Journey, Illustration Friday, Illustration Mundo, Journalista, Lines and Colors, Little Chimp Society, Meathaus, The Daily Cartoonist, Tiny Showcase, Today’s Inspiration