If you’re a freelancer, you know there’s a lot of competition out there. Regardless of what field you’re in, it’s imperative that you separate yourself from the crowd. Let’s face it, a Fortune 500 company isn’t going to hire just anybody. Something about you needs to grab their attention.

Let’s put aside how you typically win business for a moment. If you met someone in the street and didn’t have a business card or a pen, would they be able to find you based on your name? If you Google yourself, what would you find?

More and more employers turn to the Internet to see what they can find on potential new hires. It usually starts out with Google and then moves over to Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Why do hiring managers and HR personnel go to the net? It’s the easiest and fastest way to find information that normally won’t make a resume, which is a document that the person applying has full control over.

So how can you better brand yourself as a freelancer? Here’s what I recommend:

• Create a website. If possible, yours should be yourname.com. In many cases the domain will rank high in the search engines. Here you can showcase your resume, portfolio, case studies, testimonials and achievements.
• Build a blog. Preferably on your site. Write about your ideas, your experiences and your line of work. I’ll explain later how this content can be utilized for business purposes.
• Join social networks. Linkedin should be the first one you join. Place your resume on it and keep it current. Anyone you’ve done or do business with should be added to your profile. You can then expand your network. Sometimes it’s who you know that gets you more work or a job. Plus, people tend to look in their network to find a freelancer. You can also ask for recommendations for work you’ve done in the past.
• Build other profiles such as Twitter and Facebook and keep it professional. A common problem many people have is leaving these profiles public when they really shouldn’t. If you post pictures of a night out drinking on Facebook and your profile is public, anyone can see them.
• Try to use your real name or an understood variation for all social networking accounts. Using your real name in your profiles will help them to show up in the search engines, boosting your visibility. Most accounts can be linked to one another, furthering any one account’s reach.
• Socially bookmark the content you create on your blog. You can automatically have anything published on your blog sent to your Twitter and Facebook pages, especially if you use WordPress. You can also bookmark your content to other networks like Stumbleupon and Digg for added exposure.
• Write articles about your area of expertise. You can submit your article to free article sites like ezinearticles. Use your real name so these articles rank for your name as well on the search engines. Try adding 1 unique article per site over a few sites each and every month. The more sites you hit with unique content, the more listings you’ll have under your name.
• Get involved publicly in your area of expertise. Request some guest posts or interviews from other bloggers in your field. You’re likely to get a reciprocating opportunity, furthering your exposure to their audience. Even if you don’t, most blogger will link to any off-blog o off-site endeavors they’re involved in, thereby still introducing their traffic to you.
• Try doing a podcast or video segments, which are usually free to post and cost little in the way of equipment to create. Share your knowledge by giving tips and advice.

Doing all of these things will help ensure that when someone searches for your name, they will find an array of information. More importantly, if you’re in marketing, it will help show that you’re good at what you do. As an added bonus, everything you do can be added to your resume and portfolio, making your credentials stand out from the rest of the field. It may seem like a lot of work, but if you do a little at a time and keep at it, your reputation will grow. When I started my podcast I had less then 100 listeners the first month. By then end of year two, I was receiving 10 – 12K in downloads each month.

1. Market research is crucial
There are so many bloggers out there who really have no idea who is coming to their blog. They may know that all these people are interested in a common topic, but who exactly are your readers? Where are they from? How old are they? Are they male or female? What is their occupation? The list goes on and on.

It is vital that bloggers get to know who their readers are. How do you do this? Well, the easiest way is to just place a survey in a post asking various questions about their demographics and interests, and offer a prize to further encourage readers to fill out the survey. Make it short, sweet and questions optional, just in case someone feel that a certain piece of information is too personal to share.

Knowing who reads your blog will not only help you get advertisers, it will also help you write content that is better suited to your readers and help make sure that your marketing efforts are targeted towards people who are actually prepared to read your blog.

This can be done subtly as well. To see an example of this in action, simply head over to ProBlogger. Darren frequently creates polls and analyzes the results for his readers. While some of these polls aren’t about demographics and are really meant to help bloggers get information about other bloggers, Darren often asks questions like ‘How old are you?’ and more recently ‘How much social networking do you do?‘ This not only gives readers information about the ages of their fellow bloggers, it also provides Darren with valuable demographic information.

2. It is not what you know, it is who you know
In blogging, networking is everything. While you can try to do everything by yourself, writing content and marketing your blog with no help, it is much easier and more fun when you work with other bloggers in your niche. Find other blogs that talk about the same things you do, try to interact and partner with them.

Feature the content of other bloggers on your blog. This not only provide your readers with relevant information that they might be interested in, but also would sometimes encourage other bloggers to do the same to your content in a phenomenon we call ‘link karma’. (See Link Karma: How Linking to Others Can Get You Lots of Links in Return for more on ‘link karma’).

Guest posting is another great way to grow your blog, as by doing so, you can expose yourself to a whole new audience of another blog. Networking will help your blog grow quickly. When I first started out I didn’t take the time to make connections with other bloggers and while these blog grew at a fairly steady pace, the amount of traffic these blogs received absolutely skyrocketed when I start partnering with other blogs in my niche.

3. The Best Advertising is Free
There is no doubt that word of mouth marketing, or in today’s web world, viral marketing, is the best and most cost effective way to generate traffic for a blog. Write a post that others will find interesting, whether it means making a list like this one, taking an unconventional stance on an issue, or breaking some important piece of news. If your content is good, people will talk about it and it can spread virally. Use social media websites like Digg or StumbleUpon to help get the process started.

However, one must not confuse the viral marketing and word of mouth marketing as they are not the same. Fundamentally, they have different dynamics. Jennifer over at SearchEngineGuide has written a very nice article explaining this in more detail, Viral marketing is not the same as word of mouth.

4. The Importance of Public Relations
Public Relations is crucial to any marketing campaign and is very important when coming to building brand awareness and reputation for your blog. The quickest way to gain credibility is get credible sources talking about you. As Maki of Dosh Dosh puts it, ‘to influence the influencers’. While getting your blog covered in the New York Times is an arduous task, it is far easier to get your name out there through guest posting on blogs and news sources that has authority.

Many of the most popular blogs in your industry will likely accept guest posts (like this one), and the same holds true with newspapers and magazines (especially their online sections). Call or e-mail the editors and writers of some of the authority media properties in your niche and see if you can guest post on their website, magazine or newspaper. This puts your voice in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. Press releases are also a great tool that bloggers can use. For more information on how bloggers can use press releases, read a guest post I made on JohnChow, How to use press releases to your advantage.

Do you use other principles of marketing with your blog? Let us know in the comments.

The site allows freelancers to bid on as many projects as possible without the hassle of signup or account upgrade fees. You are protected by their escrow payment system, and you can withdraw funds the minute you are paid. Go ahead and build a profile to find Jobs for Freelancers today!

Please visit BidHire, who sponsored the post above.

Hosted Exchange is a viable option for those individuals and freelancers that want to harness the power of an Exchange server but don’t want to pay for a full server license, buy the appropriate hardware and deal with the maintenance. Much like the web hosting industry where a company bundles many customers on a single web server, Hosted Exchange is a cost-effective option for individuals. The Exchange service provider bundles many customer mailboxes on a single Exchange server for a monthly or yearly fee.

A hosted Exchange plan typically costs between $10 and 20 USD per month. That cost typically includes a centralized e-mail server that stores email, contacts, appointments, notes, and tasks all in one place. You can have this information synchronized (via Direct Push synchronization) with multiple mobile devices, as well as your Outlook client or directly through an Outlook-esque web interface. When traveling as a freelancer, this is an especially nice feature and the increase in mobile productivity may be worth the price all by itself.

When working with on projects with external clients, you might also benefit from Sharepoint capabilities that are often bundled with hosted exchange. SharePoint combines a centralized document repository with collaboration, project tracking, and content management tools. Using SharePoint, you can easily and efficiently manage projects and enhance the flow of communication in your business.

Online printing services like PSPrint.com are great for saving time and money, while maintaining quality. Their digital printing methods allow you to reduce both cost and waste with small-quantity orders. Also, those methods don’t involve as many steps as other printing processes or technologies, so less time is needed in producing your prints and the turnaround time is quicker.

Sure, you can say that many digital printers are using similar (if not the same) printing technologies. But the reason I chose PSPrint specifically, is actually the same reason why many freelancers can have lasting success. It’s due to their reputation for offering excellent and attentive customer service. In a world of comparable technologies, what better differentiator for success can a company have than to truly pay close attention to their customers’ needs?

At first you only skip a day here or there. But eventually, days turn into weeks and months. This is only natural, considering the busy lifestyle that most freelancers have.

That’s why, when it comes to backing up their data, freelancers really love the automation and convenience that comes with online backup services. You just install the software once, and you never have to think about it again until something bad happens. You can just feel safe knowing that it’s there, working in the background for you.

However, there are MANY different services to choose from. And prices range from FREE to $10 per GB. With so much variety, how can you pick a solution that’s right for you? Well here are a few features that freelancers should keep in mind when looking into automating their data protection:

Automation and ease of use
Because freelancers work alone, they don’t always have access to reliable technical staff. For this reason, you’ll want to pick a solution that installs quickly and runs fully-automated in the background while you work.

Also, since your time is the only product that you have to sell, you can’t afford to spend hours learning how to use a new application. It has to be intuitive enough to start using right away. That’s why any new software you buy has to be very easy-to-use in order to minimize the learning curve and prevent any problems down the road.

Continuous protection
Every freelancer has had the experience where they’ve pulled an all-nighter, working 12-hours straight for an important deadline, only to have something disastrous happen at the last second.

In order to prevent this, you’ll want to select a provider that offers Continuous Data Protection (CDP) capability. CDP simply means that the software will back up your data files every time you save instead of waiting until a scheduled daily backup time. This means that your potential “window” for data loss will be kept to only about 5 minutes instead of 24 hours.

If you decide to go with a CDP solution, make sure that it also offers block-level uploads. Block level capability allows the software to analyze your files, and only upload the portion that has changed since the last save point. This can significantly speed up your backup process and minimize the load on your internet connection.

Laptop-specific features
Most freelancers travel a lot, and often end up in places that may not always have the most reliable internet connections. Make sure that the solution you select offers laptop-specific features that can protect you on the road.

One such feature would be the hybrid capability to create both local AND remote backup copies of your data.

In other words, the solution should give you the option of creating a local hard drive partition which can be accessed in an emergency… even if you don’t have internet access. And of course, this should automatically synchronize with your online data backups as soon as you connect to the internet again.

And if you’re working out of an area that has only a slow internet connection, the CDP functionality we’d discussed earlier should ensure that your data still gets backed up without causing a significant burden on your connection.

Security and privacy
Often, freelancers will deal with very sensitive information. Make sure that the online backup service you select offers proper encryption.

But more importantly, make sure that the application you select allows you to encrypt the files with a password that only YOU know. In other words, make sure that the online backup provider can’t access your encrypted data once it’s on their servers.

Not all providers offer this feature. So make sure to ask before signing up.

So there you have it! If you want to protect your freelance business from data loss, just make sure that the solution you pick offers:

• Automation
• Continuous Protection
• Laptop-Specific Features
• Proper Security

If you follow this simple checklist, you can feel confident that you’re making the right choice for your business.

About The Author: Storagepipe Solutions offers online backup and backup software for freelancers & other small businesses.

Improve the “Linkability” of your Content
Having “static” web pages, e.g. brochure-style or storefront pages, are definitely useful for product information. But to optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the frequency and linkability of the content. My favorite method is to add a more-personal blog that shows your personality and thoughtfulness about a particular topic area. Other types of content, like white papers or aggregated selected links to related articles, are also quite useful for potential readers. Remember, the idea is to create something valuable beyond your core product offering to keep potential customers coming back.

Enable Easier Bookmarking and Sharing
Once a reader thinks your content is worth sharing, make the process as easy as possible for them! Adding website features like ReTweet and ShareThis buttons are a great way to allow your users to spread your content via their preferred channels. I also like to make sure each page has concise meta tag data (Title, Description, etc), because it will be easier for places like Facebook to import and show pertinent information about your link. As mentioned before, make sure your content is valuable and interesting because buttons-alone cannot get people to share your work.

Encourage Inbound Links
Inbound links from other blogs and websites are crucial to enhancing your search optimization and overall rankings. Listing trackbacks with each article or post will entice users to link to your site in the hopes that you will reciprocate a link. However, be aware of trackbacks from unrelated, spammy blogs or sites that are merely republishing your content without permission. For these reasons, I like to approve trackbacks manually before allowing them to enter the comments.

Help Your Content Travel
Building multiple channels of distribution for content can be a very effective way to gain exposure and attract links. Use Email newsletters, RSS subscribers, Facebook status updates, Twitter updates, content syndication, video syndication with YouTube, etc can all improve your social reach. With the number of possible channels on the web increasing, you need to make sure to stay current with popular services in the industry

Encourage Video Sharing
Online video is a growing medium, and in my opinion a rich and effective channel for entertaining, informing, or just getting a message across. If you have the resources to create compelling video content, please give it a shot. Since distribution is VERY inexpensive, especially with YouTube and embedding capabilities, you can potential receive a high return on your efforts. Encourage and embrace others who republish your videos.

Participate in Conversations
Let’s say you have a decent social presence – your Facebook page has fans, your blog is receiving comments, people are contacting you through your site. Take the time to connect one-to-one with these active readers, they’re often your best customers! Foster dialog in whatever public forums you have, but also think about dropping a quick email or note in private to create a more personalized relationship. Show your true passion for the topic at hand. You just might be connecting with a top influencer or champion of your service.

Get to Know Your Audience
As long as you understand your subject matter and that community’s interests, you’ll be able to set yourself for successful social media connections. Don’t stray too far from your niche, leverage the latest tools and industry trends, and try to stay focused on content that will drive interest in your expertise.

Thanks for taking a look at our thoughts! What tips for social media marketing and optimization would you add?

This is why choosing the right host for your site is very crucial. And to actually look for a host that is free and that is reliable just makes the task even more challenging. Here’s the good news though, there really are good free web hosting providers around. You just have to be very picky to be able to point yourself on the right one.

A few basic things to consider:

1. Check if the hosting company has been around for at least a year. This is a better way to avoid yourself from signing up on a hosting company only to find out after a couple of days or so that they aren’t reachable anymore. This could definitely cause your website a big problem especially if you don’t regularly do backups for your site and other issues.

2. Look for a host that says no banner ads. Some free web hosts, in exchange for the free service that they would provide your website, put tons of ads on to your site. Often times, this really could cause irritation for your visitors.

3. Look for a host that offers free technical support to their free hosting customers. This is very helpful especially when you’re not that very technical yourself. A company that has a good support system is often a sign that they are indeed providing a good service for their customers.

4. Look for a host that guarantees at least 99% uptime.. To actually know if a host is reliable is really very hard to determine.. Since usually you’ll just get to know about a host’s reliability once you have been with them. So your best shot is at least go with a host that gives high guarantees for their reliability.

Free hosting provider I recommend

So far, I’ve been with a few free web hosts and have experienced some of the worst. One free web hosting provider I highly would recommend is Doteasy.com. There are other free good web hosts too, but I have to admit, Doteasy has better offers than others.

Doteasy is a free hosting company that is well established, so that gives me an assurance that my website is safe and secured. They also strictly implement banner-free, this means no annoying ads on your website. Aside from that, I find their support team very reliable especially at times I’m having trouble on my site. I can’t be more thankful, because they still are very willing to help me even when the problem was basically caused by me. And as for their reliability, for a free host, I can say that I hit the jackpot with them. They guarantee 99.9% uptime and they have kept my website up and running all the time.

I get all of their great service for free, this is certainly a very good deal that I just can’t pass up. As of the moment, I can’t think of a better host or just even close on providing the service I get from Doteasy. And to get your own free web hosting account with them, you just need to click here to sign up and open a free account.

This second part will cover building a modal window and coding its behavior. If you don’t know what I already explained, please go back to the first article here and come back once you finish that one. However, if XHTML, CSS and jQuery are your friends, you may pick things up as we go, so just go ahead and read this part of the tutorial.

Let me remind you the concept we described in the previous article. We have a horizontal menu with a few categories. Each category has multiple subcategories and each such subcategory may contain a random number of products. For easier and faster movement of users thorough the site, we won’t reload the page once a subcategory is clicked. Instead, we will display all products in a modal window.

Here’s a screenshot of the menu and one simple modal window.

How does the modal work?

Once someone clicks a subcategory link, the modal window will be displayed and the products will show up. The modal will close when products are clicked, and the browser is targeted to a new page, when the user clicks the close button or when the overlay is clicked. It isn’t that hard is it?

The main issue is that we need different content in the modal window. Each subcategory will have its own products and we need to find out which products to display. We will do this with the help of jQuery as you’ll find out in just a few minutes.

But first, lets get to coding the structure and design of the modal window. First of all, we have the overlay mask, which will be an empty div. We need to make sure the overlay mask will be on top of all site content but beneath the modal window, so we will use z-index:1100 for modal content and z-index:1000 for the overlay. The overlay won’t be displayed unless a subcategory is clicked, so display:none is also mandatory. You should also choose your favorite color for the overlay, and set it absolutely to top left 0 pixels.

<div id="overlay-mask"> &nbsp; </div>

#overlay-mask {
	display:none;
	z-index:1000;
	background-color:#333;
	position:absolute;
	top:0;
	left:0;
	}

The modal window will be something like this. An outer div to hold everything in place, another inner div to hold the products, and a link that will server as a close modal window button. Because we want the button to span all the way, we had to use an outer div for the content of the modal, so that’s why there’s 2 divs and not just one.

<div id="overlay-content" class="all-rounded">
 
	<div>
		<a href="http://www.ultimatewasher.com" target="_new" class="thumb"><img src="images/wash1.jpg" width="102" height="102" alt="Wash1" /><span>First thumb</span></a>
 
		<a href="http://www.city-rentals.ca" target="_new" class="thumb"><img src="images/wash2.jpg" width="102" height="102" alt="Wash2" /><span>Second</span></a>
 
		<a href="http://www.tonsoftools.com" target="_new" class="thumb"><img src="images/wash3.jpg" width="102" height="102" alt="Wash3" /><span>Third</span></a>
 
		<a href="http://www.carriergenerators.com" target="_new" class="thumb last"><img src="images/wash4.jpg" width="102" height="102" alt="Wash4" /><span>Fourth</span></a>
 
	</div>
 
	<a class="close bottom-rounded">Click to close</a>
 
</div>

As you see, each product is in fact a link containing a product thumbnail and some text. Lets see how we style them. the purpose of the tutorial is creating the modal window, not styling it, so the style is really basic, especially if you take out the rounded corners.

#overlay-content {
	width:500px;
	}
 
#overlay-content div {
	width:450px;
	padding:25px;
	padding-bottom:10px;
	}
 
#overlay-content a.close {
	display:block;
	padding:0px;
	border-top:1px solid #333;
	font-size:15px;
	line-height:25px;
	height:25px;
	text-align:center;
	}
 
#overlay-content a.thumb {
	display:block;
	width:102px;
	height:122px;
	padding:0px;
	margin:0px 14px 0px 0px;
	float:left;
	text-decoration:none;
	}
 
#overlay-content a.thumb img {
	display:block;
	width:102px;
	height:102px;
	padding:0px;
	border:0px;
	}
 
#overlay-content a.thumb span {
	display:block;
	width:102px;
	height:20px;
	padding:0px;
	text-align:center;
	color:#999;
	}
 
#overlay-content a.last {
	margin-right:0px;
	}
 
#overlay-content div {
	overflow:auto;
	}

The first two lines are just setting the dimensions of the modal window, for the purpose of a modal window that contains four products, all on the same line. The anchor tag with the “close” class is in fact the button that will be displayed in the bottom of the modal that will be used to close to modal window if needed.

The thumb classed anchor will contain the image and the text description contained in a span tag. As all thumbnails have a small right margin, we need the additional last class to remove the right margin from the last product in the modal. The overflow is used to cancel the collapsing of the inner div that contains only floating elements.

We finished with structure and styling, so lets move on to jQuery coding. Take a look at the code in its entirety and try to understand it. The explanations will follow it just below.

var opacity = '0.8'; // can be up to 1
 
$('a[name=modal]').removeAttr('href'); 	//javascript on, no need to redirect to a link here
$('a[name=modal]').click(function ()
	{
	var maskHeight = $(document).height();
	var maskWidth = $(document).width();
	var windowHeight = $(window).height();
	var windowWidth = $(window).width();
	bvar contentWidth = $('#overlay-content').width(); // width
	bvar contentHeight = $('#overlay-content').height(); // and height of content area
 
	//Set height and width to mask to fill up the whole screen
	$('#overlay-mask').css({'width':maskWidth,'height':maskHeight});
	b$('#overlay-mask').css('opacity',opacity);
	$('#overlay-mask').css('display','block');</p> <p>
 
	// put the overlay content area in the center of the window
	$('#overlay-content').css('display','block');
	$('#overlay-content').css('left',(windowWidth-contentWidth)/2);
	b$('#overlay-content').css('top',(windowHeight-contentHeight)/2);
	});
 
	// move overlay content to center of the window
$(window).resize(function ()
	{
	var maskHeight = $(document).height();
	var maskWidth = $(window).width();
	var windowHeight = $(window).height();
	var windowWidth = $(window).width();
	var contentWidth = $('#overlay-content').width(); // width
	var contentHeight = $('#overlay-content').height(); // and height of content area
 
	//Set height and width to mask to fill up the whole screen
	$('#overlay-mask').css({'width':maskWidth,'height':maskHeight});
	$('#overlay-content').css({'left':(windowWidth-contentWidth)/2});
	$('#overlay-content').css({'top':(windowHeight-contentHeight)/2});
	});
 
var $scrollingDiv = $("#overlay-content");
$(window).scroll(function()
	{
	$scrollingDiv.stop().animate({"marginTop": ($(window).scrollTop()) + "px"}, "fast" );
	});
 
$('#overlay-mask').click(function ()
	{
	$('#overlay-mask').css('display','none');
	$('#overlay-content').css('display','none');
	});
 
$('.close').click(function ()
	{
	$('#overlay-mask').css('display','none');
	$('#overlay-content').css('display','none');
	});

The opacity variable will set the overlays opacity. It would look really odd with a non transparent overlay, so perhaps anything below .8 will do just fine. Except if you have it completely transparent when there isn’t going to be any overlay.

We find all anchor tags that has “modal” as name, and remove their href attribute, as we don’t want to move to another page before seeing the overlay, don’t we?

Then we have the on click behavior. As soon as an anchor link that has an attached modal window is clicked, we get the sizes of the document as well as those of the window. We also check out the width and height of the content inside the modal window.

Next, we set the width and height of the overlay mask using css attributes. We want the overlay to span across the entire page, right? We then set its opacity and make it appear in the page by changing its display property from none (set in the css) to block. We do the same with the content div, and also put it in the center of the browser window.

We also have a resize behavior, which will be triggered if you resize the browser after the page has loaded. If that happens, we check out the dimensions of the document and browser as well, and reset the content window in the center of the page. In the same time, we modify the width and height of the overlay so that it matches the changes triggered by resizing the browser.

If the page has a scrollbar and we scroll either up or down, we use the scroll jQuery trigger to animate the modal back to the center of the page. The stop function there before the animation will make sure that older animations will be stopped if the scroll is used continuously or with small pauses.

Finally, once the overlay mask or close button is clicked, we need to close the modal window, and the last two lines of code do just that.

One small, but real problem!

We haven’t taken in consideration the most important aspect. Each time we load the modal window the content needs to be different. The above code only works for the same content in the modal window such as a contact form, and we need to fix this issue.

First of all, we remove content from the overlay-content inner div and leave it empty. This div will auto-populate with proper content when a subcategory is clicked. Next, we add rel attributes to modal anchor links (those that were named “modal”). We will use unique rel attributes to identify the content we need to load.

We will also add divs that have classes corresponding to each rel attribute, which will contain the content we will load on click. We have to make this divs hidden so they don’t pop up god know where inside your site’s layout. Simple right? But how do we do this via jQuery? Even simpler, using only three lines of code.

Once a modal anchor is clicked we identify its rel attribute, get the html contents of the div that has the same class name as the rel attribute, then populate the inner div in the overlay content with the html content we found. Cool! Here’s the code for that, which we add just below the .click function.

var rel = $(this).attr('rel');
var modal_content = $('.'+rel).html();
$('#overlay-content div').html(modal_content);

And we’re done. You can check out the demo over here, or perhaps you’d like the source code? If so, you can download the source codes for the first part, which is just the sliding menu from here, or if you want the real deal you can get full source codes for modal window too from here.

Seems like everyone is a blogger these days, publishing articles on personal or freelance business blogs, updating statuses on twitter – even commenting on previously written articles. Face it, we’re blogging. But how can we stand out in a sea of keyboard happy drones? Repent from these sins and maybe the blog Gods will forgive you.

1. Pride
You can’t do it on your own, or maybe you can; don’t get me wrong, self belief is a good thing. But when you are starting a blog, one of the fastest ways to increase traffic is to partner up with other bloggers. Link exchange, link backs, shared links, they all work; find one that’s compatible with your niche then blog happy.

2. Envy
All blogs are not created equal, there is never going to be another gossip blog like Perez Hilton’s. Many have tried, but it’s still not the same. The faster you realize that you can’t imitate other successful blogs, the sooner your blog will become successful. So go out there and do your own thing, in fact look at what everyone is doing and do the exact opposite; you’ll be surprised with the results.

3. Gluttony
You can’t have all the followers, the twitter traffic machine , spamming, following everybody with the hopes they follow you back, all these are no no’s. These aren’t genuine connections, they are really not interested in what you have to say.

4. Lust
The lust for success and money from blogging. Honestly, there is no money in blogging; you can have a successful blog but I don’t see it bringing you any riches. If there is someone out there making millions from blogging please contact me!! I know there are blogs out there bringing in more than what my condo costs in day, but they just got simply lucky. 1 out of every 10,000 blogs get lucky and the other 9,999?? Well half of them fade to obscurity, and the other half are the true bloggers; still producing great content and informing and entertaining their readers all over the world..from the bedroom to the cubicle.

5. Anger
Don’t start a blog for a sake of hate, a blog solely created to lash out at someone or a group of people will eventually die. It becomes annoying because it’s the same thing over and over again. Protesting is different.

6. Greed
Take everything a step at a time. Have you ever been to those blogs with a sidebar filled with ‘Advertise Here’. Walk before you run, get the traffic before you start putting ad space up on your site. And go easy on the google ads, you don’t want your blog looking like the classifieds.

7. Sloth
Unnecessary widgets and apps on your blog makes it look unattractive and over crowded, if you don’t want any visitors to your site leave it there or put them up.

Remember always keep it short and sweet, don’t be the drunkard at the bar that won’t stop talking.

While compiling a proposal for internet marketing consulting, I knew I had a couple excel reports from a previous job that could be repurposed for this project. Unfortunately, I hadn’t opened the documents in a couple years and couldn’t remember or find the password. Obviously, contacting my previous company for the key was not an option.

Maybe Microsoft can offer an online service to securely store user passwords for documents? I’d love the ability to submit a “forgot password” request and receive a new one via email, much like every online login service in the industry. Oh well, until then we have to use utilities and cracks to access our forgotten files.

I ended up finding a good solution with step-by-step details and a free download for excel password recovery at Petri IT Knowledgebase. Their guide simply shows you how to use the utility’s two available options for recovery, and didn’t take more than a few minutes to complete. Give it a try if you ever find yourself in a similar (embarrassing) predicament as mine.

1. select categories, wait for a page to load
2. select a subcategory, wait for another page to load
3. check out products
4. click to go to desired product

The typical web user only wants to click once or twice to get to the product they want. And if clicks are unavoidable, make sure page loads are minimized! The more clicks and the more page loading they have to go through, the higher the risk they will get lost and never come back to your site. The good news is that you can achieve a good navigation menu that reduces page reloads.

This article is an in-depth tutorial on how you can achieve an expandable navigation menu using valid xhtml coding, valid css and a bit of javascript.

The concept

In order to achieve a fully functional menu for our huge website, we need one that will enable users to choose a category or subcategory in a timely manner, then browse hassle-free for the product they like. In Part 1 of the tutorial, we will create a horizontal bar that contains all the main categories of the products our customer is selling. This menu bar will expand so users will see all sub-categories. In Part 2 of the article, we’ll create the functionality where clicking on a sub-category will trigger an overlay that displays a list of the individual products.

In the image above there’s a sketch of what the site layout should be. We have the menu bar, right under the menu comes a header that can contain images, paragraphs of text, news. You get the picture. Then comes the content area. The menu will expand and push the header together with all elements that come after it down the page, as you can see in the following image.

Sneak peak at what we’re building here

Just in case you cannot wait for the end of the article, just check out the demo over here.

Coding the HTML and CSS

The navigation bar will consist of an unordered list. I have chosen this tag because menus contain lists, therefore an unordered list is the best way to go for this. The part of the menu that will slide will be contained by a div, each item in the navigation menu having a separate div for its information. We will have the header and the content section also contained in a div. Here’s a view on the XHTML structure.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”> <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en” lang=”en”> <head> <!– head meta tags, css , javascript links will be here–> </head> <body> <div id=”wrapper”> <!– used only for cosmetic purposes. IE: The site background image in the top –> <ul id=”menu” class=”all-rounded”> <!– the menu ul I talked about. all-rounded class will round the corners –> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>home</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” >cleaning</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” >cooking</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” >gardening</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>about us</a></li> </ul> <div class=”menu-extend cleaning”> <!– extended menu div –> <ul> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Pressure Washers</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Pressure Washers Accessories</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Hoses and Water Fittings</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Water Pumps</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Dry Vacuums</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Wet Vacuums</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Industrial Vacuums</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Specialist Vacuums</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Vacuum Cleaner Bags</a></li> </ul> <ul> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Steamers</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Scrubber Dryers</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Buffers</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Floor Care Chemicals</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Carpet Care Chemicals</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Carpet Cleaning Machines</a></li> </ul> <ul> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Trolleys</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Household Cleaning Chemicals</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Vehicle Cleaning Chemicals</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Cleaning Equipment</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Brooms and Brushes</a></li> <li><a href=”” target=”_self”>Interchange System</a></li> </ul> <span class=”clear”>&nbsp;</span> </div> <div class=”menu-extend cooking”> <!– same as above div –> expanded menu goes in here for cooking <span class=”clear”>&nbsp;</span> </div> <div class=”menu-extend gardening”> expanded menu goes in here for gardening <span class=”clear”>&nbsp;</span> </div> <div id=”header”> <!– header div with an image –> <img src=”images/header.jpg” width=”900″ height=”200″ alt=”Header” /> </div> <div id=”content”> <!– finally the content area –> <h1>Fancy menu</h1> <p> Fancy menu info goes here </p> </div> </div> </body> </html>

I chose to round up the corners of the menu. To create this effect we will use some CSS level 3 and browser specific markup. The navigation bar will also have vertical separators between the items. The separator is consisted of two different lines, each with a custom color. We won’t use images for the separators. Instead we will use the css border property. Each list item in the navigation bar will have a 1px solid left border, and a 1px solid right border. The first element in the list and the last one won’t have the left border, and right border respectively. Here’s the html markup of the modified list, to reflect that there won’t be the above mentioned borders, and the css code:

<ul id=”menu” class=”all-rounded”> <li class=”no-left-border”><a href=”” target=”_self”>home</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” >cleaning</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” >cooking</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” >gardening</a></li> <li class=”no-right-border”><a href=”” target=”_self”>about us</a></li> </ul>
.all-rounded { border-radius:9px; -moz-border-radius:9px; -webkit-border-radius: 9px; } /* these are the rounded corners */ #menu { display:block; margin:0px auto; width:898px; border:1px solid #DD4CAB; height:48px; background:url(’../images/menu_bg.jpg’) repeat-x; color:#DD4CAB; } /* ul style */ #menu li { display:block; width:178px; height:48px; line-height:48px; float:left; text-align:center; border-right:1px solid #DD4CAB; border-left:1px solid #AD3B87; } /* li items style */ #menu li.no-left-border { border-left-style:none; } /* no border as we said */ #menu li.no-right-border { border-right-style:none; }

Because I chose to round the corners of the menu, there are some issues while hovering the menu items, so the links that are held by the li items will have to have rounded corners as well. The first link in the menu will have rounded corners on the left side, while the last one will have rounded corners on the right side. Here’s the code for that:

#menu li a { display:block; height:48px; color:#DD4CAB; text-decoration:none; } #menu li a:hover { display:block; height:48px; color:#DD4CAB; text-decoration:none; background:url(’../images/menu_bg_hover.jpg’); } #menu li.no-left-border a:hover { border-top-left-radius:9px; border-bottom-left-radius:9px; -moz-border-radius-topleft:9px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:9px; -webkit-border-top-left-radius:9px; -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:9px; } #menu li.no-right-border a:hover { border-top-right-radius:9px; border-bottom-right-radius:9px; -moz-border-radius-topright:9px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright:9px; -webkit-border-top-right-radius:9px; -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:9px; }

Coding the behavior of the menu using jQuery

I am not going to reinvent the wheel here, but jQuery seems to be the best javascript framework out there. If you’re not familiar to jQuery you can find some great tutorials and examples over here.

Javascript for menus? Are you insane!

Some people out there say you must not use javascript for navigation under any circumstances. I am sorry guys, but if you write your code professionally, using javascript for menus can seriously enhance your site’s functionality. The trick they’re talking about is what do you do when javascript is unavailable in the visitors browsers? Well, you have to code your menu in such a way it has progressive enhancement and works just fine if javascript is off. And yes, this menu achieves progressive enhancement. If javascript is turned off, the menu will be directly visible, including the part that should slide when needed. Nothing is inaccessible. Moreover, search engine’s bots will see the site just as if they were a visitor without javascript, so search engine optimization is preserved if using this menu.

Let’s get down to the jQuery

jQuery uses html IDs and classes to identify elements in the html page that it needs to work with. Our menu currently has unique ID, but the “cleaning”, “cooking” and “gardening” links don’t, so we add a class for each of them. The classes are unique too.

<ul id=”menu” class=”all-rounded”> <li class=”no-left-border”><a href=”” target=”_self”>home</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” class=”cleaning-but”>cleaning</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” class=”cooking-but”>cooking</a></li> <li><a target=”_self” class=”gardening-but”>gardening</a></li> <li class=”no-right-border”><a href=”” target=”_self”>about us</a></li> </ul>

In order to achieve progressive enhancement, we must first disable javascript and load the menu page. So far, due to our code the menu displays in its entirety, including the part that in a few minutes will slide beautifully if javascript is on. But if it has to slide, it has to be hidden first, and this is the trick we pick out from our sleeves. The first thing we’re to do with jQuery is to hide the sliding part of the menu. By doing this, people having javascript turned on will not see the menu until they click to expand it. They will only see the menu bar. Here’s the jQuery code needed to achieve this:

$(’.menu-extend’).hide();

The rest is simple. When you click one item in the navigation bar, you are taken to a page. This happens for the Home and About us links. When you click one of the links in the middle of the menu, the menu will slide and reveal the contents. If there’s another menu visible, clicking to expand one other item will make the expanded section slide back under the navigation bar, then the required content will slide back out. How cool is that?

jQuery code step by step
There’s a bit of jQuery to be written here, so you can take a peak below to the full source code, then continue to the part I dice the code in pieces and explain what I’ve done.

jQuery(document).ready(function($) { // start the magic // if javascript is on, the menu will work ok. // Therefor we hide the expanded menu $(’.menu-extend’).hide(); $(’.clear’).height(0); // if the “Detailed menu” button is clicked, fade it out and fade in the “Close menu button” // also slide the expanded menu into place $(’.cleaning-but’).click(function () { var isVisible = $(’.menu-extend’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblecleaning = $(’.cleaning’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblecooking = $(’.cooking’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblegardening = $(’.gardening’).is(’:visible’); if(isVisible) { if(!isVisiblecleaning) { if(isVisiblecooking) { $(’.cooking’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.cleaning’).slideDown(”1000″) }); } else if(isVisiblegardening) { $(’.gardening’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.cleaning’).slideDown(”1000″) }); } } else { $(’.cleaning’).slideUp(”1000″); } } else { $(’.cleaning’).slideDown(); } }); $(’.cooking-but’).click(function () { var isVisible = $(’.menu-extend’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblecleaning = $(’.cleaning’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblecooking = $(’.cooking’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblegardening = $(’.gardening’).is(’:visible’); if(isVisible) { if(!isVisiblecooking) { if(isVisiblecleaning) { $(’.cleaning’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.cooking’).slideDown(”1000″) }); } else if(isVisiblegardening) { $(’.gardening’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.cooking’).slideDown(”1000″) }); } } else { $(’.cooking’).slideUp(”1000″); } } else { $(’.cooking’).slideDown(); } }); $(’.gardening-but’).click(function () { var isVisible = $(’.menu-extend’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblecleaning = $(’.cleaning’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblecooking = $(’.cooking’).is(’:visible’); var isVisiblegardening = $(’.gardening’).is(’:visible’); if(isVisible) { if(!isVisiblegardening) { if(isVisiblecooking) { $(’.cooking’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.gardening’).slideDown(”1000″) }); } else if(isVisiblecleaning) { $(’.cleaning’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.gardening’).slideDown(”1000″) }); } } else { $(’.gardening’).slideUp(”1000″); } } else { $(’.gardening’).slideDown(); } }); });

The first jQuery code is $(’.clear’).height(0);. This is used to set the height of the clearing div to 0. We added a clearing div to each of the expanded menu’s divs because all content inside them floats to the left, and would therefor cause the expanded menu div to collapse. By adding the clearing div we avoid that, but we also add 20 unnecessary pixels to the expanded menu’s height. We fix this problem with the code mentioned above.

Then, we have three different onclick functions. Each one does the same thing, but is triggered by a different element in the menu. I will explain the first one. $(’.cleaning-but’).click(function () is used to trigger clicking on the href tag that contains the link to cleaning menu. That link is identified by the cleaning-but class we added previously. When that link is clicked we don’t have just one behavior, so everything has to go inside a function.

var isVisible = $(’.menu-extend’).is(’:visible’); is used to check if there’s any menu currently expanded. The variable will hold either true or false values. Here, the expanded menu is identified by the general class used for it menu-extend. We will use the same process to check what expanded menu is in fact expanded, be it the one for cleaning category, or another one. We will identify those by their unique classes cleaning, cooking and gardening.

We first check if the menu is visible. if(isVisible) will return true if there’s an expanded menu, or false otherwise. If false, we will simply slide down the menu using $(’.cleaning’).slideDown(); located on the else side of the if. If there’s an expanded menu, we check to see if it is exactly the one we clicked. If it is the same one, we will slide it back up using $(’.cleaning’).slideUp(”1000″);. If it is another one, we slide up that div using a similar piece of code, then slide down the one needed. $(’.cooking’).slideUp(”1000″, function() { $(’.cleaning’).slideDown(”1000″) }); slides up the cooking expanded menu, and after that process is completed, it slides down the cleaning menu. The syntax for such a process is $(’identifier’).slideUp(duration, callback event – the one triggered after first one is completed);

Here’s a live demo version of the menu. Zip archive download will be available once we publish the second part of this article!

In the concept part we said that the contents of the expanded menu are in fact subcategories, and clicking on a subcategory will reveal the products located in that category. But that is another story and we will discuss it in the second part of the article.

Coming up next
Part 2: Displaying menu items using overlay

• of awful, low quality
• displayed in the worst way possible

The first issue is usually solved by using stock photos. There’s a bunch of free stock photo galleries and there’s even more with paid subscription. However, the second issue is tricky. In the past years you have come to know quite a few css/js powered image display tools like LightBox. Then there’s ThickBox, which I consider somewhat nicer. Both can be used in order to enlarge small thumbnails, but they both seem odd. Moreover, it depends on how you display the thumbnail, as some might not know immediately that clicking the image will provide a full size screen shot.

Brown

Take for example Brown University’s website in the screen shot. If you hover the images in the post, you will see a “+ Zoom” message in the upper left corner of the image. You will then try to go to that corner, and unfortunately, when you reach the “+ Zoom” button, it will start blinking (tested in Safari and Firefox). Now, that is really confusing. Not to mention that you can click anywhere in the picture to see the full size version. But oops, you do not know that.

Don’t panic, because I think I have found the best solution out there, and I am sharing this with you. If you check the latest version of Media Temple’s website, they too have screen shots in their control panel FAQ section. And those images are displayed perfectly. Rounded corners, borders, captions. But that’s not all of it. The great is about to be revealed. If you hover the image, in any given point, your pointer transforms into a “+” magnifying glass. What comes more natural to “enlarge” than a magnifying glass? Nothing! You even have text annotation, “Click to enlarge”, stupid.

Media Temple

Clicking will reveal a full size photo, more annotations, and in the upper central area of the image, navigation controls. YES! No need to scroll for next, previous etc buttons down to the bottom of your screen. You can even move the photo around, start slideshows, go to next picture, enlarge it even more and obviously hit the “X” close button. Now, if you do not want to go with the mouse around your screen to the “X” button, you will see your mouse pointer transformed into a “-” magnifying glass. Now, what comes more natural to “zoom out” than a magnifying glass with a minus inside it? Nothing!

Media Temple

Media Temple uses HighSlide JS, which is released under commercial license, but they do have a free version for you to try out.

Hands down for Media Temple!

Do you have a favorite or unique example of image handling you’d like to share?  Let us know via the comments section below.

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