S2KCreative: Web Design

I offer Web Design services at a fraction of the cost you'd pay elsewhere... guaranteed!   You can find full details about my Web Design services over at S2K Creative Web Design; my primary Design website.

Introduction

In 1997 when i first bought my own PC (a very old 486 for those who remember back that far) I had no idea where that big grey box was going to take me. Late that year I discovered a wonderful thing called Web Design using Netscape Composer (i believe). My first site was like many back in the day; text, images, colour...it was WICKED!

Then, as the years went on, my skills developed. I went from using Composer to Microsoft Frontpage, and from there, eventually on to Macromedia (now Adobe) Dreamweaver, which i now use 100% of the time.

Gone are the days of frames, big text and slow loading pages; they've been replaced with CSS, PHP and much more efficient types of web design.

I specifically work with:

• Joomla CMS
• Wordpress Blog System
• Custom Built PHP/HTML Websites
• SEO / SEF
• Marketing Pages

Here are a few websites I have designed:

Site Name: 2 Minutes For Hockey Site URL: http://www.2minsforhockey.com Details: Hockey video network, over 7000 video clips on site. Site Type: Joomla 1.5 Modifications: Heavily modified Joomla CMS. Videos delivered through the HWDVideoShare component with SEF URLs created by use of the SH404SEF component.	Site Name: Gold Coast Blue Tongues Site URL: http://www.bluetongues.com.au Details: Gold Coast Blue Tongues Ice Hockey Club Site Type: Joomla 1.5 Modifications: Modified template (extended width, added new module positions). Features components for video, photo, rss, sitemap & auto-upates.
Site Name: The Healthy Body Report Site URL: http://www.healthybodyreport.com Details: Niche Review Website Site Type: Wordpress Blog Modifications: Heavily modified Wordpress Template + Numerous widget & plugin addons.	Site Name: Lizard Insider Site URL: http://www.lizardinsider.com Details: AIHL and Blue Tongues Fan Blog Site Type: Wordpress Blog Modifications: Modified Wordpress blog, featuring photo gallery plugin.
Site Name: S2KCreative Site URL: http://www.s2kcreative.com Details: Web Design Company. Site Type: Wordpress Blog Modifications: Currently built on a modified Wordpress blog. Have plans to re-build using Joomla.

I build websites for a number of people, and i get asked ALL the time, what are the essential SEO changes to make.  The fact is, this is a hard question to answer, because you could optimize every single word and chances are there could be more you could do.

However, there is a short list of things that I consider the very most basic SEO essentials.  These are changes every website should make regardless of it's purpose, design or reason for being online.

1. Meta Tags
2. IMG Tags
3. Head Tags
4. Sitemap
5. Generic content pages

Sounds simple enough, right?  That's because it is.  I'll explain.

Today I uploaded part 5 of the video series teaching how to build a CSS website using nothing more than Notepad. In today's video I gave an introduction to Styles and Formatting, and how they apply to CSS websites. Primarily todays video focusses on heading tags and setting styles withing the CSS stylesheet. In the next few videos we will be greatly enhancing the styles and bringing in more CSS styling options.

To view todays video, click the thumbnail in the right menu, or click here. You can also view the videos on youtube (if you have issues viewing them on here) by going to my Youtube page.

Over the last few years I have been approached many times asking for tips on how to build custom websites using up to date CSS build techniques. 

CSS, or "Custom Style Sheet" is essentially a way to build websites that are quicker to load, easier to work with and compatible with more web browsers.  Unlike original HTML which used clumsy tables and hard coded formatting, CSS is more fluid, and much much more powerful.

The problem is, those new to web design often turn to low quality web-design software to help them with their sites.  Many of these still use the old style HTML, so the sites they build, while good looking and serving their use are not fully compatible with the search engines, and therefore seriously a major issue.