Austin Web Design Archives

How To Turn a Photo From Color into Black and White For Free in 1 Minute

by Bobby Martinez
Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Update: Since the creation of this article, Picnik has closed. Easy, just use Photoshop, right? Sure, that would be the easiest way. However, Adobe Photoshop can cost anywhere upwards of a thousand dollars, so this isn’t something that just anyone can use. Most likely, you would have to be at a company, or a school, […]

Represent Quality: Using Fine Photography

by Jacqueline Sinex
Monday, March 2nd, 2009

When it comes time to provide photos of your product or service for a website, don’t make the mistake of skimping on quality. A poor, low-resolution, fuzzy photograph can kill the presentation of your business. If you are trying to convey to your prospects that you offer a high-quality product that is of value, your […]

Making Your Site a Hotrod

by Bobby Martinez
Friday, February 27th, 2009

A magical thing seems to occur between the moment when a web design is realized as a flat graphical image, and when it is posted live as a structured website. In my years in art school, I met many fantastic designers who could plan and execute the first half of this process but had no […]

How To Stop Search Engines From Indexing Certain Pages

by Bobby Martinez
Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Did you know that you can stop Google from indexing certain pages on your website? You can, with a certain tool called “robots.txt” Robots.txt, as you might have already guessed, is a text file that you can put on your website that will direct programs that crawl the web (web crawling bots) and give them […]

Quick Tip: Mr. Tweet Can Get You Followers

by Bryan Lokey
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Update: The Mr. Tweet service is no longer available. Twitter is very similar to a large group conversation in that you must talk to people in order for them to talk to you. So as you try to build your Twitter network remember that the same rules of social dynamics apply. To be worth following […]

Create a Homepage That Sells

by Jacqueline Sinex
Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Simple is good, but beware of oversimplifying. A homepage needs to be more than just one picture of your product with an “enter” link. Gone are the 1990s. You need to design your homepage for 2 audiences – your visitors (humans) and the search engines (robots). Here are some tips: Include a brief yet specific […]

How To Create a Rollover Link with CSS

by Bobby Martinez
Thursday, February 19th, 2009

One of the easiest and neatest tools that you can utilize for web design is the rollover link. You’ve probably seen a link that will change the size, color, or take on an underline when you roll your mouse over the link. This creates easy navigation for the user and can highlight an otherwise plain […]

Wacky Wednesday in the PR House: Series 1, Part 1: Creating an Effective PR Plan

by Rachael Pierce
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

We all need to have a plan. A plan to do the laundry. A plan to exercise. A plan to keep in touch with friends. A plan for your PR campaign. We need plans. Some of them are more trivial than others – a plan for your PR is not one of them. In order […]

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