This is a review of the graphic design package Serif DrawPlus X6.

Writing this review was good timing, as I had an actual requirement for the package. However like most people, I use the same small collection of packages on a daily basis, and could I easily adapt to another? Plus given that I’m no graphics wiz, could I create something presentable with this package?

The Serif DrawPlus X6 graphic design package caters to a lot of uses, such as designing diagrams and vector art. I can easily imagine people creating ‘infographics’ with this package. Whereas I decided to create a basic map with art deco influences.

What were my exact requirements?

• Quickly produce a graphic from an idea.
• The ability to easily adapt and improve over time.
• To be able to share via different file formats.

These requirements sound straightforward don’t they? However the ability to easily adapt the graphics is something many packages struggle with, especially at novice level – How about DrawPlus X6?

Getting started

After a short time of using the graphics package, I began to become comfortable with the tools and the layout. How simple the layout was, yet the fantastic range of tools available. Even to a novice like myself, it was fairly obvious what many were meant to do. Plus when in doubt, just hover the mouse over a sidebar tool for a description.

After a while, I began to find using the package was fun, especially as I grew more confident. Sure if I was more talented, I could whip together something mind-blowing, but after a few sessions, the quality of my work was improving, helped by the ease in which you can quickly get to grips with what is on offer.

Tweaking my work

Not happy with a line colour? No problem I could easily change it. Picked the wrong font and size, a few clicks and it was changed. As long as I put together my graphic in a sensible manner and keep the original DrawPlus file, I should be able to easily adapt the graphic based on feedback and other requirements.

Growing confidence

Like any good package, as my confidence and ability grew, I was able to achieve more, and I quickly found myself working with layers, different tools, replacing colours and experimenting with different backgrounds I created.

Sharing my work

It was time to share my draft graphic design with colleagues, and I opted to share the work as a JPG image, though I could have easily distributed via a good selection of other file formats.

Anything else?

I also decided to ‘play’ around with the software, to get more of a feel for its capabilities. At one stage whilst I was manipulating a photo I had inserted, and I couldn’t believe how quickly it was handling the conversion work on my old laptop. Plus there are plenty of features for me to explore, learn and incorporate into how I graphic design.

Conclusion

As you would expect from Serif, this isn’t a bug ridden package, but a feature rich package that didn’t crash on me once, and is suitable for users of all levels.

To help you get the most out of the package, set aside time to learn the more advanced features and participate in the Serif forum.

Serif DrawPlus X6 packs a punch for a good price. I know I will be spending more time exploring this graphic design software.

This blog post provides a juicy selection of tips for people who run online shops.

Online shops are everywhere these days! You turn a corner on the internet high-way and someone is trying to sell you something! A major problem, especially for small business owners, is properly presenting their products and services in their shops, and providing the read details and features. I hope this blog post gives you some useful tips, which you can apply to your online shop.

Use high quality product or service descriptions created.

Often copywriters are hired who have no clue what they are writing about, and rely on limited information such as a brochure, or even resort to searching online for details, to help them understand the sector, and produce the sales material! You don’t want to end up with some nonsense. i.e. MadMax X two-stroke ISO-L-EGO synthetic oil, brings 21st know-how to 20th century technology, that is akin to nectar for your lawnmower engine. That was a fictional example, but you should get my point.

Instead make sure the descriptions have been written for the typical customer, providing the details they require.  Speak to your sales and distribution teams, and look at prospect enquiry emails. Then without breaking data protection laws, support the person who is producing the product / service descriptions, by providing them with information they require.

Use high quality images.

I don’t know about you, but once I leave the major online shops, I struggle to find half decent product photos. Often product photos are too small, don’t show enough detail and due to lighting issues or photo manipulation, the colours are not correct.

I appreciate not everyone can afford to bring in professional photographers. However simple techniques such as using a tripod, taking a photo when there is enough light, using suitable locations, and making sure you take a photo using the camera’s higher possible quality setting, can help. Then when you need to crop and resize a product image, you should still end up with a decent product photo.

Create useful FAQs for your prospects and customers.

Another major failing of many small business eCommerce websites is a lack of FAQs. Simple questions are often not addressed: Do you ship to my region? Can I arrange delivery on a Saturday? Can I track my delivery? Anyone who has been involved in sales, even for a short period of time, should know a handful of questions that are regularly asked. These questions should be in your FAQs, as well as addressed in your product descriptions.

Keep your online shop updated.

A person visits an online shop at nine at night, and they think they have found a product they wish to buy. However the site looks dated, no blog posts for a year, and no way to check stock level. If that person is eager to buy, they might head elsewhere as they could be unsure the business is still trading, let alone has their product in stock. You need to make sure your online shop, as well as your website in general looks fresh, and is kept updated.

Don’t be afraid to migrate to more feature rich solutions.

Many business owners try to take a short-cut when setting up an online shop. Often the ‘quickest’, ‘least complex’ and ‘cheapest’ solution is most appealing. Only to discover later on that coupon codes, stock levels, different shipping types and many other features that they wish they had, are missing from their current setup. Make sure you are using an eCommerce solution that meets your requirements, rather than limping on with a solution not right for you.

About the guest author: David is a website expert, and especially enjoys setting up online shops.

This blog post is for those with a bit of free time over Christmas. Personally I have no intention of working over the Christmas period, unless needs must. However I know many people who will spend a bit of time, working on their websites over Christmas, so I am writing this post with those website admins and contributors in mind.

Build a better image library

I learnt a long time ago to be better prepared when it comes to my website’s image library. When I need a ‘featured’ image, or just an image to brighten up a blog post, I make sure there is already a selection of images available. Don’t get me wrong, often I will use an image just for one blog post or web page, but I also make sure there is a prepared collection available.

Tips for building your media library:

• Regularly take photos throughout the year, to build up your own library.
• Make sure all images are already cropped, uploaded and website optimised.
• Use a naming convention, such as ‘featured_X’, ‘thumbnail_X’, to make finding images easier.
• Always keep original images backed up, ready for use in the future.

Also you might want to use some of those images, to help enhance your social network activity. For example you could liven up your Facebook page, by regularly changing your cover photo. You could also promote blog posts on Facebook with the help of images, by uploading an image, and then including an overview of the article, as well as the blog post link in the image description.

Automate the backup of your website

Many people ‘wing it’, when it comes to website backups, and rely on manually backing up their website. Personally I think that is a disaster waiting to happen. However with the help of a ‘cron job’ or a backup plugin, you should be able to automate either all or part of a website backup. Even if you just have your website’s database sent to you via email, it is better than nothing.

Tips:

• Make sure you regularly backup your website database.
• Don’t forget your ‘media library’ and other files which you might not have multiple copies of.
• Also it is wise to backup your website theme every time you make a change. Even an ‘off the shelf’ theme is often modified on a per site basis.
• You do need to have ‘full backups’, just in case your site is hacked or another site-wide issue occurs.
• Don’t store your backups on the same server which hosts your website!

Change contributor privileges

It never ceases to amaze me how much access website contributors are granted, even if they are just submitted website blog posts. A quiet moment is an ideal time to assess the level of website access people have to your website, and adjust if necessary. That way if their access is hacked or they become disgruntled, hopefully the damage that can be caused is reduced. With that in mind you should also make sure your contributors are using unique, and complex passwords, which they securely protect. i.e. don’t have written down in a notepad file, or a password book!

Access your website performance

It is easy to lose sight of website performance over a year. A logo is replaced with a large new version, a few new plugin are installed, blog post are uploaded which might not be website optimised, and before you know it, your website’s performance has been hit. There are numerous ways to improve website performance, and a good way to start is to actually find out how quickly your website loads using http://loads.in. If your website is slow, then a good ‘starting’ point is the following:

• Perform a plugin audit.
• Assess whether any images used in your website’s theme can be optimised.
• Setup a website cache if you’ve not already.

Always make sure you perform a ‘full backup’, before making any chances, and never jeopardise the security of your website.

About the guest post author: David is a website expert, and especially enjoys setting up eCommerce websites.

I’ve recently started using a Google Nexus 7 tablet, so thought I would share useful tips – especially relating to how I setup the Android tablet. If you have a Nexus 7 tablet, this is a blog post to bookmark and revisit from time to time, as once in a while I will update the blog post with new tips.

Last updated: 4th October 2012

Using the Google Nexus 7 tablet to read books.

I love my Kindle e-ink reader, and I would never use this tablet as a permanent replacement! However there are times, when I don’t want to be carrying around two devices, so it was important for me to be able to read ebooks on this device.

One of the best applications for reading on the tablet is the ‘Moon+ Reader’, which you can download via the Google Play store. I’ve not brought the pro version, but I am quite happy with the free version of the application. The application supports epub, mobi and txt files amongst other formats. There are plenty of great books available from Project Gutenberg to enjoy, which you can read via the ‘Moon+ Reader’ mobile app.

Here is how I made the font size larger in Moon+ Reader:

1. Open an ebook to read.
2. Touch the screen once just above the bottom grey bar, to bring up an icon bar.
3. Select the far right icon that looks like a cog, and on the next screen select ‘Visual Options’.
4. Now you can change the font size, scale and line spacing, amongst other options.

Note: It took me a few attempts to bring up the icon bar mentioned in list item 2.

How to download books to the Nexus 7 tablet

If I have not used the Amazon store, and have an ebook I got from Project Gutenberg, I then plug the usb cable into the tablet and transfer the file from my laptop computer to the Moon+ Reader book directory.

However I also download free books from the Amazon store to my kindle. To read Kindle books I do the following:

1. I visit the Amazon website via the Google Chrome web browser and log into my Amazon account.
2. I select a free book I wish to read and then at the purchase stage, I tell it to download to my tablet.
3. I then open the Amazon Kindle application that I had already installed, and logged into with my Amazon account.
4. I then click the top right icon in the Kindle application, which looks like three blocks upon one another.
5. Finally I select ‘Sync & Check for items’, and it downloads the book(s).

How I read newspapers on the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

I’ve installed the ‘Opera Mobile’ web browser via Google Play store. I’ve created a bookmark folder for newspapers, to enable me to quickly find my favourite newspapers. The newspaper websites I’ve added are:

• www.telegraph.co.uk
• m.guardian.co.uk
• www.dailymail.co.uk

Note: On some newspaper websites I can ‘pinch and stretch’ the font size using my fingers.

How to take a photo or record a video clip on the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

The software to use is called ‘Camera Launcher for Nexus 7′ by MoDaCo and it can be found in the Google Play store. It is a very small application, and I’ve not had any problems using it. The software enables you to easily take a photo or record a video clip. The Google Nexus 7 tablet only comes with a 1.2MP camera, so it isn’t high quality. It has a few basic options, including zoom. Remember it is a ‘front’ facing camera, so better suited for taking photos of yourself! I am not going to use the Nexus 7′s camera as a replacement for my digital camera.

The games I play on the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

There are many free and paid for games to be found in the Google Play store. I’ve only installed free games and so far I’ve enjoyed:

• Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space
• Bad Piggies (the pigs from Angry Birds!)
• Bombshells
• Cut the Rope
• Jetpack Joyride
• X-Plane

X-Plane and Bombshells, I would only play when I am at home as they are more involved games, and involve you moving the tablet around to control the planes. X-Plane is similar to Microsoft’s Flight Sim, and if you remember Super Nintendo’s ‘Star Fox’ or the P.C.’s Afterburner or F16, you might enjoy Bombshells. All the other games are ideal to play for a short while, when you just want a short distraction, such as on a train or at lunch.

Using Skype on the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

It is straightforward to use Skype on the tablet. Again you can download this via the Google Play store. Even though the webcam is low quality it worked okay and the webcam picture wasn’t ‘jerky’ when moving around. I noticed that when Skype recommendations were sent from another person’s skype account, they didn’t appear. Other than that I found a video skype call was fine.

With advances in technology, people often find they have less time, rather than more. This is especially a problem if it is cutting into tea drinking, and biscuit dunking time! So I thought I would share some of my computer time management techniques. This article was written with tongue firmly placed in cheek…..

Become an email ninja!

This year I started an email detox diet and I feel great! Newsletters, junk and even an email requesting I step in for 007, whilst he goes snorkelling with Miss Moneypenny, were overwhelming my inbox. So using the awesome sauce email client which is Thunderbird I’ve done the following:

• I’ve setup filters and sub-folders.
• I’ve been training the ‘junk’ feature.
• I’ve unsubscribed from most newsletters.
• I check my email less and often just twice a day.
• I stopped using one of my email accounts, and stopped checking another regularly.
• If someone sends me multiple emails in a day, I will often respond to them all via one email response.

I’ve reduced my online reading.

I devour words and each week I consume a book (currently reading spy books). However in the recent past I used to also read too many digital newspapers, and blogs. It is a sad geek habit, if you find yourself checking Google Reader numerous times per day! Now the habit has been kicked and the amount of blogs that I follow has been culled.

The excel task list.

Oh yeah, this **** is getting real now! I got my geek on, and started using an excel spreadsheet as a to-do list. Plus it saves me the hassle of having to carry a task list around with me, as it is now located on my laptop. Now I can easily located the urgent tasks, and save the lower items for quieter moments.

This means less stress, more major completed tasks and biscuits as rewards. I’m not joking, I mentioned my love for biscuits to a client, and they promptly sent me a tin full of luxury English biscuits!

Social network detox.

My digital pores have been cleansed recently, due to a social network detox. If you find yourself checking your ‘streams’ too often each day, perhaps you need to limit yourself? I did, and found it has contributed towards better concentration and productivity.

The conclusion?

With all the digital clutter wanting to make inroads into your life, you probably need to tweak your computer habits every so often. Then hopefully you too will have more time for dunking biscuits into your tea. I recommend cookies, as they are awesome at absorbing tea.

This article is about the CloudFlare CDN service, helps improve website performance, as well as providing security features.

Note: This is a guest post, but not written on behalf of CloudFlare.

Most people understand how a website cache works. Usually it takes the form of regularly accessed database queries being saved as static files, which then can be loaded quicker, as static files load quicker than retrieving the data from the database. When a website is going through a period of heavy demand, else the server is underpowered for the requirement, a website cache can be a great help.

However as the world becomes more connected, people are accessing sites from more locations around the world. This means your visitors could be using any number of far-flung routes to visit your website, and the networks which they travel could vary in performance.

By using a CDN, some static content from your website, could be cached at various locations around the world. This means that when a person visits your website, some static content actually could be loaded from another server closer to them, thus helping to load your website content quicker, than it otherwise would have been.

With great connectivity, comes great threats, which we have been covering on the Geonet Solutions blog. The CloudFlare service also can help tackle some of these threats, such as spammers and ‘botnet zombies’. How does it do this? Well to use the CloudFlare CDN service in the first place, you need to allow it to be the first port of call for your website traffic, thus giving it permission via your DNS records. So as it is deciding which server in the world to serve the static content, it can also keep an eye out for security threats.

Incredibly the basic CloudFlare service doesn’t come with a price tag, it is free to setup and once your DNS records have been updated around the world (usually 24 – 48 hours), the service can be helping to protect your site, whilst also increasing its performance.

The service provides detailed statistics to help you gauge the effectiveness of the service. You can even grant permissions to ip addresses whether you felt it was a false alarm, and assign trusted statis to IP addresses.

The CloudFlare service is not a one-stop location for your performance and security needs, but instead can be used to lend a helping hand, whilst your development and design team also implement performance and security tweaks.

About the guest post author: Dave writes about website performance, amongst other website topics, including LemonStand.

This article is about using social networks to promote small businesses.

You can successfully use social networks to promote small businesses, but many fail to be successful, and there are many hurdles. Plus once you stop updating the social network, the traffic to your main website can die down.

Note: You use any advice or information within this blog post at your own risk.

It is important that you use social networks as part of a larger marketing strategy, often as a conduit to growing a mailing list or newsletter. That way when the updates are quiet, some of the traffic has been moved to other communication methods, enabling you to engage with people via one stream, who originally discovered you via a variety of social networks.

Many people fail to find a balance in their social network use, when promoting their small business. Often an update will be shared, that on hindsight shouldn’t of been, and sometimes a person will become perhaps too personal, to the extent they are neglecting other small business tasks.

You also don’t just have to be engaging on social networks, but can also use social networks to share links to content, such as blog posts, images, web page updates and videos. These updates in turn, could potentially be shared, aka ‘retweeted’, which could have SEO benefits, as well as getting more traffic to your site.

Sometimes a business will dilute their social network presence with multiple accounts, which can either hinder or help the social network engagement. You must make sure your core social network accounts are being properly utilised, and also be careful not to fall foul of duplicate content sharing, such as retweeting your own tweets via Twitter across multiple accounts, which is frowned upon, and potentially could see you banned.

Social networks can be a good way for small businesses to show insight, and enable you to perhaps be more responsive than larger business can be at times. Through building up a following, perhaps with many of the business’s followers also following each other, people will at times, be able to see when you go the extra distance for your customers.

Social networks can be a time hog, they can stop you from getting on with your core work as well as being a potentially PR nightmare. It is wise to put together a social network policy and procedure, and make all employees tweeting on behalf of the business or on business matters, stick to the policy and procedure, even if that means they are not allowed to discuss their business activity on social networks.

Don’t forget to integrate social network features into your website, not just for people to share your links on networks, but also for you to maximise the benefits of traffic coming from social networks, such as displaying Twitter hashtags through a promotion.

About the guest author: David often writes about Darlington website builders, amongst other topics.

A website can by any number of things, but most would agree it should be informative, providing the content that a person seeks, or a means to obtain something. However what many websites fail at, is to provide a good user experience. A website needs some ‘oomph!’.

You need to quickly impress your website visitors, regardless of their landing page.

When someone visits a website they will quickly form an opinion. Your website in most instances, has a short period of time to impress, and unlike shopping in a town where the next suitable shop might be a street or two away, with regard to websites, the next place to visit is only a click or two away.

So when someone lands on your site, regardless of which web page or blog post they entered via, you need to be off the starting blocks quickly, and providing the user experience not only that they expect, but going further, and giving your website some serious oomph!

A visitor is not just limited to viewing your site via a desktop monitor, but can be a laptop or tablet, and now more often a mobile phone. The person visiting could be parked in their car, sheltering from the rain for a few minutes. They could be curled up on their sofa. The person could be at work, looking at your offerings over their mid-morning coffee, or any number of locations.

A website needs to be more than just visual elements.

How and when a person visits your site, impacts the experience. The technology, the usability and obviously the accessibility matter. Not only that, but your site needs to load quickly, yet offer the range of features, ready at the person controls, enabling them to find what they desire. Today’s website technology can provide the user experience you require, if handled by the right developers and designers. Also for many popular content management systems, there are plugins which can work towards these objectives as well.

Make sure you work with the right website developers and designers.

In the world of websites, it is all about detail, and detail matters. Detail doesn’t translate to complex, but making sure you have the right parts, in your ‘website engine’, should have synergy with your web design. Website design and development, should ideally be handled by the same firm. The synergy of a website firm, can translate into your final website, and in turn, if handled by the right team, translate into a better website, that has ‘oomph!’. Even if you are not using a website firm to build and update your website, you should make sure your website does what intended, and enables your target visitors to action on your objectives.

I hope this article has given you something to think about.

About the guest post author: David blogs about Darlington website design services, when not eating cheese baguettes.

This article provides useful website administrator and user advice about staying organised. So if you run or update a website, you should read this article.

Note: You use any tips or information contained within this article at your own risk.

Staying organised can work towards increased productivity, which ‘could’ with regards to a website, result in your objectives being more successful. Rather than typically looking at what an administrator or user can do on-site, this article looks primarily at being organised away from a site.

Task Lists

Many people write a task list in a notebook, but the moment you start team working, this can become a problem. Especially when it comes to monitoring what has been done, when and by whom. Some people try and over complicate the situation by looking to use whiz-bang services aimed at handling tasks. However a simple spreadsheet is often perfect and Google docs or Dropbox can be the simple effective solution. Then you can assign a task to a person, mark with a priority and allow that person to update when finished.

Passwords

Website administrators rarely have one password for a site, as there are usually secondary accounts associated with the site itself, such as social networks, analytics, forums etc. You do not want to use the same password for all these different accounts, and the password does need to be complex. One solution is to use the KeePass software to store your passwords in an encrypted file. Enabling you to have complex passwords for each different account associated with your site work.

Backup

You should look to automate the backup of your website’s database and site files. You can even put in place a solution where a MySQL database is regularly emailed to you. Non-administrators should also be concerned with backups, as chances are they are working with files away from the site. Experienced website users don’t log into a site and then work, most create documents, images and spreadsheets etc away from a site first. There are many free online backup solutions, plus you can use software such as Cobian to automate your backups to online locations, else to removable media.

Team working on files

There are many services that can help teams work on the same files, but often the less fuss the better, enabling even the novice to quickly create or update files shared with others. Google Docs and Dropbox are two of the best ways to share and update files with others.

About the guest post author: This article was written by David, who blogs about Darlington web design services, amongst other website related topics.

This article is about dealing with ex-employees where websites and related data are concerned.

Often website owners will hire others to work on their websites, either as one-off assignments, else on an ongoing basis. This can help move the website project forward, and add new features, that perhaps the website owners wasn’t capable of producing themselves, but unfortunately it also means you have to be careful of access and security.

Ex-employees often do not have their website access revoked.

For example often people will leave a project, but their access rights are not revoked. This leaves both the website owner and the employee in a position. It is best for all concerned that not only are people only granted the minimum access possible when working on a project, but when they leave, their access is revoked ASAP.

It isn’t unusually for example, for people to be granted administration access to a website, where they do not require that level of access, and then once they leave the project, the access is not disabled. It surely would have been better if not only did the person have their own unique account, but one which wasn’t a high level and then could easily be disabled, leaving the possibility to be re-enabled if the writer rejoins the project later. This presents a more robust, sensible and secure level of access for all concerned.

Sensitive data is often available, months, even years after a person left.

Another example is when people are granted access to website statistics, to help them improve the quality of the work they produce, but when they leave, the access is still enabled. For people moving on, especially if they go to work for a competitor, it is important the access is removed. It isn’t just website administration and statistics, that are often not secure, but also details such as FTP, database access and other important and sensitive data.

An access policy and procedure needs to be created to restrict and manage access.

Many website owners, through failing to either restrict or remove access, are reliant on both current and ex-employees to act with good conscience, and not use this oversight and poor judgement to their own advantage.

It is best for all concerned that a policy and procedure is put in place from the very beginning, even at the suggestion of the employee, to make sure all concerned stay protected.

About the author: David enjoys writing about website security, and other website topics, when not eating too many biscuits.