http://www.designedbyday.com/ en-us Fri, 5 Mar 2010 5:25:04 GMT Fri, 5 Mar 2010 5:25:04 GMT http://www.designedbyday.com/What-is-a-CMS-(and-why-you-want-one).asp A CMS, or Content Management System is exactly what it sounds like - it's a way for you to manage the content within your website. You've probably heard of some of the popular do-it-yourself CMS's such as WordPress, Open Source and Joomla. A CMS can allow you to perform a few simple things like updating the existing content on your website to managing files, photos, creating news or blog entries and much more.One of the best reasons to have a CMS is that it allows you instant accessibility to your website content from virtually any computer, Mac or PC, anywhere with internet and WITHOUT needing to know website code. Content management systems are built around a database - that is all of your website content - these words you are reading right now, for example, are stored in a database and are pulled from the database onto the appropriate web page when requested. Editing web content is as easy as creating a Word document or composing an email.The Designed By Day CMS allows you amazing flexibility and control over your website - not only that, but your website doesn't need to conform to any particular template or HTML layout. Adding, editing, deleting and linking content within the Designed By Day content management system is simple and fast, so you can get more work done in less time.The integrated blogging/news system (title it whatever you'd like) is a great new addition to the Designed By Day CMS. Blogging is a great way to increase exposure, build up website content and keep your viewers up to date on the latest and greatest from your business (or personal venture). The CMS also allows you one-click generation and submission of RSS and sitemap XML content, giving you a powerful search engine submission tool (*CMS submits to Bing, Yahoo! and Google). Finally, the CMS blogging system can be linked with your Twitter, Facebook or Coaches Town (sports team management website) account to automatically link back to your latest posts.The above are just a few of the great features you get with a Designed By Day content management system. Please contact me today to find out how we can integrate one into your existing website or into a redesign/new one. http://www.designedbyday.com/The-time-is-right-to-update-your-website.asp Over the past year we've heard about the economy and how tough it is out there - and it's true. One thing I have seen a lot of however, is businesses re-thinking their approach to the web and the technology available.Yellow page listings are a thing of the past - investing in quality SEO (search engine optimization), a new website design, CMS (content management system) or discovering new clients through social networking are crucial to building up an online presence that is more than just a novelty. Your website is likely to be your first impression for new customers. Make it count!There has never been a better or more important time to take a long hard look at your current website and see what you can do to make it WORK for you. Contact me today for a free website consultation! http://www.designedbyday.com/More-HTML-encoding-help.asp I know I just posted yesterday about some fantastic little sites that help with encoding or decoding HTML and special characters for websites... but I have another one to add. When coding with XML, sometimes you need to include links or images and the like, and you need to turn those lt; and gt; symbols into an entity - for example, lt; becomes amp;lt; and gt; becomes amp;gt; - I was nearly certain those were correct but rather than correct code later I wanted to double check and found this handy reference. I'm sure there are more complete/thorough resources out there but this gave me everything I needed quickly so I thought I'd share it. http://www.designedbyday.com/Designed-By-Day-Website-Search-Engine-(an-alternative-to-Google-Search-for-Sites).asp I'm a big fan of Google - as big a fan as the next guy. I like their option to embed a Google search right into your website and give users the ability to search your site or search the web... there are a couple of downsides though:Google loves it some Google - everything Google is naturally branded... Google.Giving a potential customer Google's web search is pretty much likea customer walking into a Ford dealership and the sales rep says quot;hey, we have some nice cars but why don't I walk you over to the Chevy dealer so you can see what he has tooquot;.Google searches performed on your website are dependent on Google having indexed your web pages, and displays what Google feels is most relevant.With this in mind, I developed an internal website search engine that can be added to the Designed By Day CMS. This search allows visitors (and potential customers) to quickly search the content of YOUR website and find exactly what they're looking for. This new Designed By Day search engine can also include blog/news entries from the integrated blog system, giving your customers the most information related to their search.Below is an example of the results you would get by using the search engine located on designedbyday.com (you can try it yourself here). If you'd like an estimate on a new website, integrating the Designed By Day CMS into an existing site or upgrading your existing Designed By Day CMS, please contact me! Results displaying for quot;websitequot; Nh Website design and development Designed By Day is a NH website design and development company, specializing in web 2.0 design and development. Designed by Day offers social networking setup and integration with websites such as Facebook or Twitter, search engine optimizat...About Andrew (Andy) Day A little about myself... If you're looking for resumeacute; stuff, you can find that here. Andrew M Day Just Andy, thanks! I grew up very much into art (sketching, painting) and cinematography. I owned a Fisher Price PXL2000 cam...Website design and development services Website design and development services - From a simple informational website to a full-blown database driven content monster, Designed By Day can provide a solution. Each website is taylored to your needs, your budget and YOUR goals. ...Website Portfolio Below are a few examples taken from my website portfolio. The date of completion ranges from 2003 to 2008. Some websites may have changed or been altered since completion, and thumbnails may look different than the actual website.Website design and development news Welcome to the DesignedByDay.com website news blog. From time to time new websites, new features and resources will be posted here so be sure to either bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed! http://www.designedbyday.com/Encoding-URLs-made-easy.asp The current project I've started working on has a lot of dynamically created links to external websites, and not only that but some of those links contain affliate information or redirect urls. To do things properly, some of these redirected links should be encoded using hex values to replace things like ampersand, slashes and the like. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this page should provide some insight.I found this useful little tool online which does that AND decodes, which has also been extremely helpful in spots where I've needed to pick apart a URL and figure out what's being passed to another website. http://www.designedbyday.com/Longtail-Flash-Video-Player.asp If you're looking for a great customizable flash video (.flv) player for your website, LongTail Video has the perfect solution. I've been using this little number on a few different sites (weddingsbyday.com, braunfilm.com) lately and I couldn't be happier. You can specify a still image, a link, the resolution and if you really want to get fancy an XML playlist.This player also has some great plugins so you can throw ads in there to support your site. There are also a number of different player skins available for download OR you can quickly skin it yourself to match your site's colors. If you're tired of hearing quot;I don't have [Windows Media Player plugin/Quicktime plugin]quot; get this player and startusing quick-loading flash video! http://www.designedbyday.com/Re-Launch-of-Designed-By-Day-website.asp It's finally done!I'd like to welcome you to the new (and improved) designedbyday.com. It's hard to believe but it's been over 2 years since I had made any major updates to the previous version of this website.Since 2008, I have been working with dozens of new people on new projects, and throughout that time I have been putting time into improving and upgrading the designedbyday.com CMS. Some of those improvements include:Integrating my blogging system with the CMS (as you can see here) with RSSwith integrated Twitter updatesBuilt-in search engineAn enhanced file systemMulti-admin notes...and a bunch of other tools that I'm pretty excited about.As before, this website isn't just about trying to quot;sellquot; you on a new or re-imagined website. This website is about providing you information to help make a well-informed decision when taking steps to better your online presence.Please feel free to contact me with any questions, suggestions or for a quote! http://www.designedbyday.com/CSS-Navigation-and-more-icons.asp A fantastic resource for CSS layouts, menus and other tips and tricks is CSS Play. They cover a lot of the basics like using alignment or positioning to move text or produce simple effects, but they also have some fancier navigation and layout ideas that are helpful when trying to design that table-less website.While you're at it, if the post about website icons that I mentioned before didn't give you what you're looking for, check out this little number. Sure, you have to pay but they're some nice professional looking icons in there. Their navigation is neat too, with the background floating bubble accomplished with jQuery. http://www.designedbyday.com/Really-Simple-Setup---Podcasts.asp Recently I had someone asking me about setting up a podcast. I'd never really considered using that avenue before, simply because I don't create music, nor do I have a talk show. What I compeltely missed was that podcasts can also be video - ah HA! So naturally I NEEDED to know how this was accomplished, and even more importantly, how it could be accomplished by code, automatically.I stumbled across this article regarding Applies podcast format and specifications.I was shocked to see it was merely an XML/RSS feed that you submit to Apple. Now naturally you need to take some care in the format you present your podcast in (they also detail formats that are most commonly supported) but all you really need is an XML feed and an account! http://www.designedbyday.com/Worlds-Worst-Websites-and-licensing-your-work.asp This blog isn't for the faint of heart. I along with many other web developers and designers take a great deal of time and effort to make sure I produce a good-looking well formed website. From color selection to layout and font size, we (developers) will spend hours trying to get things just right.This is an example, a perfect example, of everything NOT to do. Licensing Audio/Video workThis would be a horrible blog if I didn't provide a little tidbit of USEFUL information so I present you with this link. If you're producing work - video or audio, and you're looking to put a license into place, this website provides a very simple, easy to understand way of creating a license. http://www.designedbyday.com/All-Visiting-Designers-must-see.asp If you're a web designer and you've stumbled across this website, you certainly need to make sure you check out this little number. I'm a big fan of this website for a number of reasons. Free icons are always a plus in my book, but all the tricks and tips are fantastic as well. It's a Wordpress powered website (boooo!) but the design and ideas are all by a guy named Edward Calugtong. Speaking of free icons, I found this crazy site a short while ago. It's got hundreds of icons within, and allows you to sort by size-range, commercial/non-commercial use and keyword. If you're a designer, you simply must check it out. http://www.designedbyday.com/You-Tube-Video-junkies---this-ones-for-you.asp I've got a little video tool here that a relative of mine found that lets you export YouTube and other video site videos to mp4 format so you can download them to your computer. I honestly don't know how great a quality you're going to get from a video that's been compressed to upload, compressed upon upload and once again compressed to mp4 for download. It's kind of like making a xerox copy of a copy of a copy... for what it's worth though: Here's your tool.If that one doesn't work for you, you can always try this one.