Lisa Designs is proud to announce a new feature. You’ve been asking me about this for years, and I am pleased to have something to offer you that really works! And works great. It’s an online, browser-based editing tool that will let you update and change your website yourself, from anywhere you have an internet connection!

There is no extra software needed to buy, and the editor is so simple to use that I even had my kids editing websites after a brief tutorial. That’s the way I test things — I have my kids or my mom (hi MOM!) try it out. I figure if they can do it, it’s a pretty good bet most people will be able to figure it out as well.

The editor fits into any site I design for you — so you aren’t limited to boring canned templates. You can have the coolest looking site in the world — still wow your clients and friends — and you can go on to edit it yourself. Pretty nifty– huh?

The interface is similar most common word editing programs, so the icons and functions will look very familiar to you. You will be able to upload photos, change text, add pages — you name it, you can do it!

If you are interested in this new feature, contact me at ls at lisadesigns dot com.

I’m sure I’ll be talking about this more on the blog as the days go by, but for now I wanted you to know it was ready for use! Your website, your way!

Very busy with lots of work. But I did promise you Friday Fun every Friday. So here. This is one of my all-time favorite graphics. Sometimes you’re the windshield. Sometimes you’re the bug. Or in this case the Penguin:

The Lonely Rangers are playing tonight at the Chophouse. 7-9pm C’mon out and see us!

See! See how happy I am to be playing? (really I’m thinking — oops just hit a wrong note. I’ll smile this goofy smile and maybe no one will notice)

This question would have been a lot easier to answer about 10 years ago. Back in “the day” there was only one go-to place to get your domain name, Network Solutions. They weren’t cheap, either. About $80 per year to register your .com name. Try to register several and you would be racking up a mighty large bill rather quickly. Finding what you wanted for your domain name back then, in the good ole days, wasn’t that difficult. For instance, I wanted lisadesign.com but it was already taken. Hmmmm? What to do? Well, I was in a hurry to start this business, and a little brain dead from all-night feedings with infant twins, so I just tacked an “s” on the end — lisadesigns.com was born. Worked for me. One less thing I had to worry about.

But then! Oh boy — domain name deregulation happened. Suddenly Network Solutions wasn’t the only game in town. Domain resellers started popping up all over the place! Register.com, tucows, godaddy. They were all out to undercut each other in price. It dropped to about $10 per year and hovers right around there now. The sky became the limit for domain names. Everybody wanted one. Everybody bought them. Enterprising entrepreneurs bought them to resell them. The field was wide open. Soon, most everything worth buying was already bought. Sure you can buy from a third party, but you will have to pay for it. Sometimes pay dearly.

So what’s a new website wannabe to do? First, try and see if your #1 choice is available. I just bought www.lonelyrangers.com for my band. Our band was already named The Lonely Rangers. Either I got lucky or our band name was so ridiculous nobody had thought of it before. (Just kidding! I love our band! Hi guys!!) It was a good deal that even though I thought it would surely be taken, I went ahead and checked anyway.

If your #1 choice is not available you may have some options to move a few things around like I did with my domain name and the “s”.

Add the location of your site into your domain name. For instance Motions, a site I do for a local dance apparel store, was already taken. However, our Motions is in Rapid City (hi Google) so we bought motionsrapidcity.com for Motions Rapid City.

If your business name is really long, it may help to abbreviate a little bit. South Dakota Overhead Doors becomes sdoverheaddoors.com

Use a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary to come up with ideas. I love that Sheilatom.com, one of my first clients, has a sing-song rhymi-ness to it. Sheila Tom Dot Com! She got lucky — she came with that name.

Some theories say to use “power” words like super, mega, plus etc. to make your domain name more exciting. Several of the domain companies listed above have domain generators that will automatically combine words to help you with ideas.

Bottom line is to make sure you try your first choice before you do anything and you may get lucky. If not, don’t despair. Keep playing around with different combinations and ideas. Sleep on it. Make sure the combination of words you are thinking of purchasing don’t combine to spell something else you don’t want associated with your business. Run it by friends, co-workers, even your kids. They might notice something you don’t.

For $10 a pop, you can most likely afford to purchase several of your choices while you mull them around. It is probably a good idea to grab them before somebody else does. Good thing I did. Or we might have had to change the name of our band to the notsolonelyrangers.com

Why indeed? Let me tell you why — because blogs are like internet gold, that’s why. What? What am I talking about “internet gold”? What could I possibly mean? Well, hang tight. I’m going to tell you.

Blogs are the secret to getting to the top of the search engine rankings. And that, as we have discussed before, is the way to a successful website.

But how do they work, these blogs? And why is a blog so important to ranking?

Think of it this way. A blog is a frequently updated, naturally search-engine friendly addition to your website. Blogs are text-rich, link-rich and have very little extraneous HTML. It’s like candy for search engines. They love it.

Check this out. If I write a blog post about Rapid City — anything about Rapid City, South Dakota and start blogging away about this or that thing that is happening in Rapid City and how happy we are in Rapid City and how Rapid City is the best city to live in ever — how many times have I written about Rapid City? How many times have I spelled out R-a-p-i-d C-i-t-y? And how many chances have I given a search engine to find me using the search terms Rapid City? What if I did a blog post a month or a week or twice a week and talk a little about Rapid City? All of those posts get indexed in my blog forever. How many times have I mentioned Rapid City then? It’s like compounding interest for my blog. Pretty soon I have my place cemented at the top of Google’s searches for Rapid City. Lucky me. Smart me.

Wait a minute, you say. If I have a blog what am I going to talk about? What could I possibly have to say that would be interesting? Really, it doesn’t matter. What have I written about so far in this blog? You know about marketing your site, how to resize images, SEO optimization, Friday Fun links to Matt Harding and how to configure your kid’s laptop. Sure all those posts have useful information for you (except maybe Matt Harding) But that isn’t really the point of the blog. Does the content have to be useful, entertaining, engaging? Well, it helps. I am sure people are coming to this site to find out a few things about the specific information I offer. But all that is a bonus for my readers.

The truth is, content wise, it really doesn’t matter– as long as I keep blogging I can talk about underwater basket weaving for all Google cares. I’ll end up being ranked #1 for underwater basket weaving in Rapid City — I mean, come on, how cool is that?

Seriously, what is going to happen is that when they search for a web developer in Rapid City, I am going to be right up there at the top. And that, my friends, is really internet gold.

Updated to add: You’re gonna love this — go to www.google.com and type in underwater basket weaving Rapid City.

Introducing the newest LisaDesigns, LLC creation: Travel Trailer Village located in Dumfries, Virginia. Oh boy do I want to go there! They aren’t kidding when they call this place “An Oasis of Natural Beauty”. Stop by, visit the site, and get ready to go camping!

Do you have kids? I have kids. Twin daughters. Since they have a mommy that works as a web developer, they are the envy of all their friends as they get my old computers when I upgrade to a new one. This year I bit the bullet and got a new Dell for one daughter when her sister was to be the recipient of the power laptop I was giving up. To make up for not having as much power, we got her a fun yellow color. Seems to make her happy and I don’t foresee her using Photoshop or any high-end graphics programs, so the performance should be adequate. At least for the time being.

So many parents are concerned about their children’s experience on the internet. And right they should be. I thought I would share a few ways we set this up to be enjoyable and safe for my daughters. I’ll also show you where they go to have some fun — as this is Friday Fun afterall.

First thing I did was load Firefox as their primary browser. I recommend Firefox as it doesn’t have quite as many tracking/spyware issues as IE. The next thing I did was set their start page to www.yahookids.com This way they have a kid-friendly place to go that will also limit their search options on what they see when they search from yahookids. You can reset the start page by going to tools >> options>> main. From there you can type in what you want their homepage to be.

I customized Firefox for them with a theme. As one is a lover of all things pink, and the other into dolphins and stuff, we set up a theme accordingly.

The most favorite place they like to go is Fun Brain. I hear them playing games from this site quite often. It is educational and also fun — a win win situation for them and for me!

I found this great typing site that helps them hone their typing skills. They really enjoy this one. It’s called Dance Mat Typing. As my girls are dancers, they very much identify with this site. Another win, win!

What about email? It is really a personal decision as to whether your child should have their own email account. I decided to set one up in gmail for the twins as they like to email with their grandmother in Colorado and Wyoming or their cousins across the US — even their cousins in Sweden. However, I used gmail’s built-in filtering system to make sure they only get email that is from approved senders. Everything else is deleted. No spam, no unwanted messaging. It was pretty simple to set up.

1. open your gmail account

2. click on settings, then filters

3. click on “new filter”

4. in the TO box type in your child’s email ie: yourchildsemail@gmail.com

5. in the Doesn’t have: list people’s email addresses that you allow them to get email from UNMONITORED. For instance grandma@grandmasemail.com or mommy@mommysemail.com or daddy@daddysemail.com or bestfriend@bestfriendemail.com — make sure to include the “or” between each email address.

6. Then go to “next step”:

7. check all these:

Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
Forward it to: youremail@youremail.com
Delete it

This will send YOU all the email that is not approved. You child will never get a Viagra ad or an email from a stranger. Their spam folder will always remain empty. If you get something that you want them to see you can forward it to them from you instead if it showing from the original sender. You can always add more approved people later.

That’s all it takes. Works like a charm.

Have a great weekend! I’m laying low as we are in the midst of the Sturgis Bike Rally. I have nothing against bikers, but I am working on a record here. After 30 years of living in Rapid City, South Dakota I have not once been to the Sturgis Rally. I’m trying to make it into the Guiness Book of World’s Records on that one.

Big Apple Bus Tours

LisaDesigns, LLC is proud to launch a new site design for Big Apple Bus Tours in New York City. Please take a moment and stop by!

www.bigapplebustour.com

Working as a web developer isn’t all toil all the time. I get a kick out of a lot of things I find while surfing around looking for interesting tidbits or “new and improved” ways of doing things. Some of the sites I come across are very fun and can be addicting in a web-world sort of way. I thought I would bring some of these fun sites to you in a Friday Fun category, to give you something to look forward to each Friday.

So, here is my first Friday Fun post. Enjoy!

I found out about Matt Harding through Frugal Dad, one of my regular blogroll blogs. Matt Harding is a self-proclaimed “deadbeat” who quit his job to travel around the world. At each of his stops he asked someone to video tape him while he did a little dance. He posted his video online and then the internet magic happens. Someone found the video and passed it on to someone else, who passed it on to someone else and so on and so on and so on. Matt soon became, as he says: “quasi-famous as that guy who dances on the internet”

The story gets better. A company that makes gum found his video and then asked Matt if he would recreate his journey and make a new video. And they would pay him to do it. So he did.

Here is his video. Here is his website. See why I love the internet? People pay this guy to travel around the world and dance. Pretty cool.