The Directory vLabCat Directory

It’s going to be hard to sum up everything that is included in our customized eSyndicat directory. In a nutshell, we’ve taken an already robust directory platform and converted into a full on, featured loaded Business directory. One that is not only competes with the major directory scripts out there, but is also affordable and extremely dynamic.

Maybe it’s because we have directory owners on our team, maybe it’s because we see the real potential for Webmasters to make a successful and profitable business, or perhaps we, ourselves are completely sold and committed to developing and evolving a great directory platform.

Whatever the reason, we are happy to announce our Directory Platforms to the public.

Continuing Development Through Plugins and Addons

Part of the reason we chose the eSyndicat as our base platform choice is because of the tremendous possibilities in terms of expanding and developing to take our ideas of what a quality business directory should offer… to the NEXT level. Not only are we creating advanced features to render a great directory product, but we are also putting a considerable amount of effort in extending as many different features through plugins and addons.

This will be an ongoing effort on our part, and as time beats on, we will release more and more great plugin/addon products for our clients to choose from.

An Eye on Social

Face it, social networking is the ‘thing’ to do, and the way we see it, it will be the thing to do for as far as we can see in the future of online interactivity. And, what better way to make use of such a great tool, than to extend it in our directories? Business community meets and mingles with their direct consumer market? The consumer market, aka, local and niche communities benefit by being a part of either their local community or a specific niche… with the edge on finding services, products, commodities and related business interests.

The concept serves the community/consumers well because they can share their favorite dining spot, pub, store, service with others that share a common interest or within their local community. At the same time, they can connect with others and create groups for their schools, churches, sports, specific interests, neighborhoods and more. They can also find out what local events are going on, or, perhaps post a classified — engaging and interacting with those of the same interest or locally.

We understand this importance and see the true benefit with hyperlocal networking and combining the business and consumer worlds.

With our upcoming Go Social Directory addon, which we plan to release by August of 2010 — we are literally putting social networking right at the fingers of directory owners.

Let’s Keep Moving

Now, with our base platforms and products available to anyone who wants to capitalize on all of the above — we are ready to keep a steady but strong pace in continuing development and releasing new products and services that will take our clients to the next level… every time.

I am currently work as a UI Programmer/Web developer for McKinsey & Company. My work includes several scopes such as custom development using jQuery, HTML 5, CSS, PHP, iPad/mobile applications. I also develop themes and modules for applications such as WordPress and Drupal.

Created an online store for Green Cheeky Baby using WordPress.

Redeveloped the eSyndicat directory to create a professional business platform. Please see Visionary Lab for full details of work involved.

One of a weblog’s great benefits is that it essentially frees you from “Web design.” You write a paragraph, click a button, and it’s posted on the Internet. No need for visual design, page design, interaction design, information architecture, or any programming or server maintenance.

Blogs make having a simple website much easier, and as a result, the number of people who write for the Web has exploded. This is a striking confirmation of the importance of ease of use.

Weblogs’ second benefit is that they’re a Web-native content genre: they rely on links, and short postings prevail. You don’t have to write a full article or conduct original research or reporting. You can simply find something interesting on another site and link to it, possibly with commentary or additional examples. Obviously, this is much easier than running a conventional site, and again indicates the benefits of lowering the barriers to computer use.

As a third benefit, blogs are part of an ecosystem (often called the Blogosphere) that serves as a positive feedback loop: Whatever good postings exist are promoted through links from other sites. More reader/writers see this good stuff, and the very best then get linked to even more. As a result, link frequency follows a Zipf distribution, with disproportionally more links to the best postings.

Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don’t apply to such sites, because the readers’ prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes important.

Also, while readers of your intranet weblog might know you, usability is important because your readers are on company time. (As an example, see IBM’s use of intranet blogs — among the ten best intranets of 2006.)

Usability Issues
To reach new readers and respect your existing readers’ time constraints, test your weblog against the following usability problems.

1. No Author Biographies
Unless you’re a business blog, you probably don’t need a full-fledged “about us” section the way a corporate site does. That said, the basic rationale for “about us” translates directly into the need for an “about me” page on a weblog: users want to know who they’re dealing with.

It’s a simple matter of trust. Anonymous writings have less credence than something that’s signed. And, unless a person’s extraordinarily famous, it’s not enough to simply say that Joe Blogger writes the content. Readers want to know more about Joe. Does he have any credentials or experience in the field he’s commenting on? (Even if you don’t have formal credentials, readers will trust you more if you’re honest about that fact, set forth your informal experience, and explain the reason for your enthusiasm.)

2. No Author Photo
Even weblogs that provide author bios often omit the author photo. A photo is important for two reasons:

It offers a more personable impression of the author. You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you’re not trying to hide. Also, users relate more easily to somebody they’ve seen.

It connects the virtual and physical worlds. People who’ve met you before will recognize your photo, and people who’ve read your site will recognize you when you meet in person (say, at a conference — or the company cafeteria if you’re an intranet blogger).

A huge percentage of the human brain is dedicated to remembering and recognizing faces. For many, faces work better than names. I learned this lesson myself in 1987 when I included my photo in a HyperCard stack I authored that was widely disseminated on Mac-oriented BBSs. Over the next two years, countless people came up to me and said, “I liked your stack,” having recognized me from the photo.

Also, if you run a professional blog and expect to be quoted in the press, you should follow the recommendations for using the Web for PR and include a selection of high-resolution photos that photo editors can download.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles
Sadly, even though weblogs are native to the Web, authors rarely follow the guidelines for writing for the Web in terms of making content scannable. This applies to a posting’s body text, but it’s even more important with headlines. Users must be able to grasp the gist of an article by reading its headline. Avoid cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context.

Your posting’s title is microcontent and you should treat it as a writing project in its own right. On a value-per-word basis, headline writing is the most important writing you do.

Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting. Even if users see a short abstract along with the headline (as with most search engines), user testing shows that people often read only the headline. In fact, people often read only the first three or four words of a headline when scanning a list of possible places to go. Sample bad headlines:

What Is It That You Want?
Hey, kids! Comics!
Victims Abandoned

Sample good headlines:
Pictures from Die Hunns and Black Halos show
Office Depot Pays United States $4.75 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations
(too long, but even if you only read the first few words, you have an idea of what it’s about)
Ice cream trucks as church marketing
This last headline works on a church-related blog. If you’re writing an ice cream industry blog, start the headline with the word “church” because it’s the information-carrying word within a context of all ice cream, all the time.
In browsing weblog headline listings to extract these examples, I noticed several headlines in ALL CAPS. That’s always bad. Reading speed is reduced by 10% and users are put off by the appearance of shouting.

4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
Many weblog authors seem to think it’s cool to write link anchors like: “some people think” or “there’s more here and here.” Remember one of the basics of the Web: Life is too short to click on an unknown. Tell people where they’re going and what they’ll find at the other end of the link.
Generally, you should provide predictive information in either the anchor text itself or the immediately surrounding words. You can also use link titles for supplementary information that doesn’t fit with your content. (To see a link title in action, mouse over the “link titles” link.)

A related mistake in this category is to use insider shorthand, such as using first names when you reference other writers or weblogs. Unless you’re writing only for your friends, don’t alienate new visitors by appearing to be part of a closed clique. The Web is not high school.

5. Classic Hits are Buried
Hopefully, you’ll write some pieces with lasting value for readers outside your fan base. Don’t relegate such classics to the archives, where people can only find something if they know you posted it, say, in May 2003.
Highlight a few evergreens in your navigation system and link directly to them. For example, my own list of almost 300 Alertbox columns starts by saying, “Read these first: Usability 101 and Top Ten Mistakes of Web Design.”

Also, remember to link to your past pieces in newer postings. Don’t assume that readers have been with you from the beginning; give them background and context in case they want to read more about your ideas.

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
A timeline is rarely the best information architecture, yet it’s the default way to navigate weblogs. Most weblog software provides a way to categorize postings so users can easily get a list of all postings on a certain topic. Do use categorization, but avoid the common mistake of tagging a posting with almost all of your categories. Be selective. Decide on a few places where a posting most belongs.
Categories must be sufficiently detailed to lead users to a thoroughly winnowed list of postings. At the same time, they shouldn’t be so detailed that users face a category menu that’s overly long and difficult to scan. Ten to twenty categories are appropriate for structuring many topics.

On the main page for each category, highlight that category’s evergreens as well as a time line of its most recent postings.

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
Establishing and meeting user expectations is one of the fundamental principles of Web usability. For a weblog, users must be able to anticipate when and how often updates will occur.
For most weblogs, daily updates are probably best, but weekly or even monthly updates might work as well, depending on your topic. In either case, pick a publication schedule and stick to it. If you usually post daily but sometimes let months go by without new content, you’ll lose many of your loyal — and thus most valuable — readers.

Certainly, you shouldn’t post when you have nothing to say. Polluting cyberspace with excess information is a sin. To ensure regular publishing, hold back some ideas and post them when you hit a dry spell.

8. Mixing Topics
If you publish on many different topics, you’re less likely to attract a loyal audience of high-value users. Busy people might visit a blog to read an entry about a topic that interests them. They’re unlikely to return, however, if their target topic appears only sporadically among a massive range of postings on other topics. The only people who read everything are those with too much time on their hands (a low-value demographic).
The more focused your content, the more focused your readers. That, again, makes you more influential within your niche. Specialized sites rule the Web, so aim tightly.

If you have the urge to speak out on, say, both American foreign policy and the business strategy of Internet telephony, establish two blogs. You can always interlink them when appropriate.

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
Whenever you post anything to the Internet — whether on a weblog, in a discussion group, or even in an email — think about how it will look to a hiring manager in ten years. Once stuff’s out, it’s archived, cached, and indexed in many services that you might never be aware of.
Years from now, someone might consider hiring you for a plum job and take the precaution of ‘nooping you first. (Just taking a stab at what’s next after Google. Rest assured: there will be some super-snooper service that’ll dredge up anything about you that’s ever been bitified.) What will they find in terms of naïvely puerile “analysis” or offendingly nasty flames published under your name?

Think twice before posting. If you don’t want your future boss to read it, don’t post.

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a naïve beginner who shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Letting somebody else own your name means that they own your destiny on the Internet. They can degrade the service quality as much as they want. They can increase the price as much as they want. They can add atop your content as many pop-ups, blinking banners, or other user-repelling advertising techniques as they want. They can promote your competitor’s offers on your pages. Yes, you can walk, but at the cost of your loyal readers, links you’ve attracted from other sites, and your search engine ranking.

The longer you stay at someone else’s domain name, the higher the cost of going independent. Yes, it’s tempting to start a new weblog on one of the services that offer free accounts. It’s easy, it’s quick, and it’s obviously cheap. But it only costs $8 per year to get your personal domain name and own your own future. As soon as you realize you’re serious about blogging, move it away from a domain name that’s controlled by somebody else. The longer you delay, the more pain you’ll feel when you finally make the move.

By Jakob Nielsen

Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.

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What is Included in the vLab eSyndicat Business Mod?

Our eSyndicat Business mods come with easy installation instructions and plugins that will automatically convert your standard eSyndicat link directory into a full-on Business listing directory. You do not have to do anything but upload the modification, install the template and plugins. We also provide you with all of the social icons and Web 2.0 marketing graphics to get you well on your way to offering a professional business directory.

Learn more by going to Visionary Lab

The Directory vLabCat Directory

It’s going to be hard to sum up everything that is included in our customized eSyndicat directory. In a nutshell, we’ve taken an already robust directory platform and converted into a full on, featured loaded Business directory. One that is not only competes with the major directory scripts out there, but is also affordable and extremely dynamic.

Maybe it’s because we have directory owners on our team, maybe it’s because we see the real potential for Webmasters to make a successful and profitable business, or perhaps we, ourselves are completely sold and committed to developing and evolving a great directory platform.

Whatever the reason, we are happy to announce our Directory Platforms to the public.

Continuing Development Through Plugins and Addons

Part of the reason we chose the eSyndicat as our base platform choice is because of the tremendous possibilities in terms of expanding and developing to take our ideas of what a quality business directory should offer… to the NEXT level. Not only are we creating advanced features to render a great directory product, but we are also putting a considerable amount of effort in extending as many different features through plugins and addons.

This will be an ongoing effort on our part, and as time beats on, we will release more and more great plugin/addon products for our clients to choose from.

An Eye on Social

Face it, social networking is the ‘thing’ to do, and the way we see it, it will be the thing to do for as far as we can see in the future of online interactivity. And, what better way to make use of such a great tool, than to extend it in our directories? Business community meets and mingles with their direct consumer market? The consumer market, aka, local and niche communities benefit by being a part of either their local community or a specific niche… with the edge on finding services, products, commodities and related business interests.

The concept serves the community/consumers well because they can share their favorite dining spot, pub, store, service with others that share a common interest or within their local community. At the same time, they can connect with others and create groups for their schools, churches, sports, specific interests, neighborhoods and more. They can also find out what local events are going on, or, perhaps post a classified — engaging and interacting with those of the same interest or locally.

We understand this importance and see the true benefit with hyperlocal networking and combining the business and consumer worlds.

With our upcoming Go Social Directory addon, which we plan to release by August of 2010 — we are literally putting social networking right at the fingers of directory owners.

Let’s Keep Moving

Now, with our base platforms and products available to anyone who wants to capitalize on all of the above — we are ready to keep a steady but strong pace in continuing development and releasing new products and services that will take our clients to the next level… every time.

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.

The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn’t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.

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This lesson is a part of a series of articles I am writing (and updating) that teaches newcomers the basics in Web development. I’ll also write more advanced tutorials for those already in the industry, but need specific help such as extending with plugins and hacks. Moving forward, I plan to develop courseware covering a wide variety of subjects such as PHP and ColdFusion, CMS, Social site development, Web 2.0 standards and more. -GeekyBitch

Objectives:

• Learn the different tools you’re need as a Web developer/Webmaster.
• The Differences between HTML and XHTML
• Introduce HTML Standards
• Create a Basic Web Document

This Lesson is an introduction to this course and explores some of the important topics that should be touched upon prior to starting any path to becoming a Web designer/webmaster. As you become more proficient in the Web profession, your will gain more in-depth knowledge about these subjects through experience.

Read more…