Friday, April 25, 2008

How-To: Remove the top navigation panel

Maybe some of you felt the same way as I did and were annoyed by this blue top navigation panel that kind of destroys the complete page layout. Well, I'm happy to say that there is a solution for this problem. As you can see, there is no top navigation panel on my blog any more, and you can get rid of it, too!

Here are the necessary steps to remove the top navigation panel:

  1. Customize CSS Style Sheet
    On your navigation panel click on "customize" or just log in normally. Go to "Layout" > "Edit HTML". You now see the complete source code for your blog. Now, insert the following code to the <head> section of the document (between <head> and </head>).
    /* Remove top navbar */
    #navbar-iframe {height:0px; display:none;}
    For example, I added these lines at the end of the <head> section. So in my document it looks this way:
    /* Remove top navbar */
    #navbar-iframe { height:0px; display:none; }
    ]]>
    </head>

    Click on "Preview" to make sure that it works then save your changes.
    That's it, the top navigation panel should be gone now!

  2. Optional: Add Admin Options to Sidebar
    Now, with the top navigation panel gone your blog looks much nicer but there is one disadvantage: the handy quick links of the panel, such as "Create Post" or "Customize" are gone. To compensate for this, one easy solution is to add those quick links to your sidebar. To do so, log in on www.blogger.com, then go "Layout" and follow the steps described below:
    • Click on "Add a page element" in the sidebar menu to the right.
    • Search for "Link List" and add it to your blog.
    • Now click on "edit" for this newly added link list.
    • Give it a title, e.g. "Admin Options".
    • Enter a new site name, e..g. "Customization" and set the URL to http://www.blogger.com.
    • Add the link.
    • Enter another new site name, e.g. "Create Post" and set the URL to your create post page. To determine the correct link, log in, go to "Posting" > "Create" and copy the link from the address line.
    • Click the "Save changes" button.

    You are done now and have access to your blog's admin options via your sidebar!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

References for my website

I did some research about different kinds of topics related to website promotion and found some interesting sites. Some of the sites just contain links to other sites, others have short or detailed instructions. My plan is to use these sites as references, find the best ways for website promotion, and to describe those ways in some detail on my website.

In the following you can see the references I intend to use so far.

StartupNation.com - Web Site Promotion
http://www.startupnation.com/topics/7/61/Web-Site-Promotion.htm

StartupNation is a free service founded by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. The website provides easy-to-follow, practical information about a variety of topics relevant for people that want to start and grow their own successful business. Since one of the objectives of a new business is to promote its website, there are also useful tips covering this topic. All the content is provided at no charge, which makes this site an excellent resource.


Blizme.com - Top Secrets SEO Masters Don't Want You To Know
http://blizme.com/top-secrets-seo-masters-dont-want-you-to-know/

This blog post on blizme.com provides various tips about search engine optimization (SEO). Since SEO is an important topic for website promotion today, it is important to know about possible ways to increase a website's ranking in search listings.


InsideCRM.com - 50 Ways To Get Free Advertising For Your Startup
http://www.insidecrm.com/archive2/2007/04/50_ways_to_get_.html

This blog post on insidecrm.com introduces 50 ways to get free advertising for a startup business. Many of these tips can be applied on the process of promoting a new website, which makes this blog post a valuable


ConversationMarketing.com - The Internet Marketing List
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/03/the_internet_marketing_list_59.htm

This article on ConversationMarketing.com describes little things one can do to improve a websites marketing plan. 59 tips are listed and described in an entertaining way.


APromotionGuide.com - Free Website Promotion Tutorial
http://www.apromotionguide.com/

This tutorial on apromotionguide.com describes important steps one should consider to do when serious about website promotion. The tutorial gives detailed instructions on how to complete different promotion phases and also explains key concepts in a detailed way.


That is what I have so far. I will see if I can get enough information out of these references or if I need to find additional ones. I also have some ideas on my own that I will add to the final website. Let me know if you know any other resources that could be interesting for me.

Website tested for color blindness and anomalous forms

After katherine posted a comment about possible difficulties people with color blindness could have with my website's black/red color combination, I started to do some research about color blindness. Luckily, I found a website (http://colorfilter.wickline.org/) that allows you to check a website against several color blindnesses and anomalous forms. After entering an URL the website's color filter presents you the website as it would appear to a color blind person. In the following you can see the results for my website.

Color Blindness

Protan (click on image to enlarge it):










Deutan (click on image to enlarge it):










Tritan (click on image to enlarge it):










Anomalous Forms

Mono (click on image to enlarge it):










Protan (click on image to enlarge it):










Deutan (click on image to enlarge it):










Tritan (click on image to enlarge it):










As you can see, the website is well readable and easy to navigate in all cases. Therefore, color blindness shouldn't be an issue with my current color theme. I'm very happy about this since I like the colors as the are at the moment. Obviously, someone with color blindness wouldn't have the nice site impression as others, but the most important thing is that they can still use everything the website has to offer without any further restrictions.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Blog appearance customized

As you can see I customized the blog's appearance a little bit to better match my final website. I didn't put too much work in it because after all it is "only" the blog to the website. However, I think in general it is a good thing if website and blog match each other (at least a little bit, e.g. in terms of colors). That makes it easier for visitors to remember the site's style and they feel more comfortable in switching back and forth from website to blog.

Content form added


I added a contact form to my website to give visitors the opportunity to send me comments and feedback. I really didn't want to publish my email address since this can easily lead to lots of spam emails. Therefore, I embedded a contact form using the Zoho Creator. I think this is a good solution since I "outsourced" the contact functionality and only embedded the contact form itself in my site. I'm not sure if Drexel's dunx1 server allows server-side applications. Probably not, so there isn't really a way to send contact information without using an external service or server anyway.

If you want to add a contact form on your website as well, you should try the creator tool!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Final Website started!


After some experimenting with colors and thinking about how to structure my website, I decided to use a red/black color combination. I think this is a good mix between classy and bold.

If you want to have a look at the site as it is at the moment, the address is:
http://dunx1.irt.drexel.edu/~jwk39/652/

I'm pretty sure that some of the layout, and of course the content, will change over the time. But for now I think it is a good start. I validated both, XHTML and CSS, and added the related validation buttons to the site's footer.

Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to improve the site.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Website Structure

I was thinking about the structure of my website and so far I have the following pages/categories in mind:

  • Home
    • a short welcome message and trying to make the user interested in the website's content.
  • About
    • some information about myself.
  • Website Promotion
    • collection of tips and suggestions on how to promote a website with little or no money.
  • Website Improvement
    • collection of tips and suggestions on how to improve a website. For example, simple and short (!) suggestions for search engine optimization.
  • Links
    • lists of links. For example, to references, other INFO 652 websites, my own websites, etc.
  • Blog
    • link to my blog, opens in new window.
  • Contact
    • Ways to contact me. Best would be a contact form but I don't know if Drexel Pages support server-side scripting like PHP.