Blogs are becoming more and more popular. In many quarters it now seems that having a blog is more normal than not having a blog. Blogs are a place where you can rant and rave about things that have effects on your daily life, keep a diary, or talk about your favorite hobby. Now many Web businesses are starting blogs to keep in contact with customers and give customers the heads up on new products and services being considered.

The blog has become a marketing tool. Internet promotion is no longer simply a matter of having a website and advertising its existence on every popular website and in every popular newsletter. Now you can promote your business products and services with blogs.

People who spend a lot of time using the Web have likely read many blog posts whether they realize it or not. Most of the younger generation either has blogs or spends a great deal of time reading friends’ blogs. The young adults of today spend a great deal of time reading blogs such as those put out by their favorite authors or blogs that have product reviews.

One of the most interesting recent developments is that people of all ages have started using blogs as a source for the latest news. Blogs provide up to the minute eye-witness accounts of major events within minutes of their occurrence. On the other hand, blogs don’t have to be approved by any fact-checkers or editors before they are posted. So the reliability of blogs as a news source is questionable.

The main idea is that blog reading is becoming a more and more normal activity, undertaken by average people. For a Web marketer, the prospect of having a blog means more Web traffic if the blog has many readers.

There are a lot of things you can do to improve your blog’s traffic. You can advertise it as a pay-per-click search listing in search engines. You can also swap links with other blogs and websites. But, it is even more important that you provide interesting content in your blog that will keep your blog’s readership levels high.

The Importance of Blog Template Design - Most people know the information I’ve already given you. What most people don’t realize is how much the blog template design plays a roll in the success of a blog. Even whether or not people find your content amusing can be heavily impacted by the surrounding environment your blog provides to your content. Most blog software and blog hosts offer a basic set of templates that you can use to make sure your blog is organized. If you don’t do your own blog template design, you should at least customize one of these blog templates.

Blog Template Customization - Advertisements It may not seem like advertisements are a feature that enhances a blog, but the truth is that pertinent advertisements serve a purpose to those who are interested in your topic. Google AdSense is one of the top advertisement services currently being integrated into blog templates. However, it is also an excellent source of revenue for your blog.

Audio Content While not directly a piece of the template, seamlessly embedding audio into your blogs can make them much more interesting for site visitors. You can also include quick links to audio in your blog template navigation bar.

Banner Customization You should create your own banner for your blog, not use the placeholder banners provided with the basic blot templates. Make it relevant to your blog topic and suitable for your business image.

Favicon for Personalization Use a favicon to further brand your blog. This will give people a personalized feel for your site in their bookmarks and next to the blog address. It should be consistent with your blog and business image.

Page Features Take the time to customize your blog template skins. Make sure the layouts and backgrounds are consistent with the rest of your Web business site. You don’t want a generic blog design to hamper your branding.

Photos for Personalization You ought to not just include photos in your blog entries, but also place them wherever they will supplement your company image in the template. Use borders around your photos to give them a framed look.

RSS Feeds Make sure you enable the RSS feeds option on your blog template setup. Those with newsreaders or using Web RSS feed services will see the headlines and content of your blogs. They can click on headline links to read more from your blog site. This is one of the best ways to get exposure and a constant stream of dedicated readers to your blog.

About the Author
Everybody can blog but not every blogger makes money! If you are serious about wanting to make money blogging , then make sure you pick up the essential guide at http://www.blogforprofits.info and find out how you can get set up your blog correctly and start blogging for profits from the very first day.

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With the advent of HTML email marketing has taken to a whole new level, where’s once text-based emails where consider the norm there’s now a wealth of rich media, technology and functionality to consider.

HTML formatted email can look just like a web page. We’re talking everything from layout, graphics, active links, colorful fonts, interactive form, charts you name it. Combined, this allows the customer to interact with the brand and its identity in a way that no other medium can offer. Needless to say Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo and most popular email clients support HTML also.

Used properly graphics and visual imagery in ads can also be more effective. How? One way is through the use of related technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets that can better assist you in structuring such concepts as grouping.

Containment is the technique of tying related elements together with in a box. The box can either be visible (with a border or background color of some sort,) or it can be invisible which involves putting your material in close proximity and keeping a moat of while space around the group. Content is then laid out in a way that’s more visually appealing, and much easier to scan and navigate, than plain text email.

Such practices are invaluable when trying to get your most important points across, which isn’t always an easy task especially in terms of email. Grouping is also one of the main tools used by the brain to simplify a complex situation.

Creating an HTML email is simple, there are many advanced mailing list management script such as add2it mailman phplist that make it easier to write send and manage your HTML messages to your list of subscribers. Phplist in particular (which is what I use and recommend all my clients to use) is great for newsletters, publicity lists, notifications, and many other uses.

Phplist also has a built in WYSIWYG HTML editor that allows you to create and view your HTML message even before you send it out, though I prefer using an actual HTML editor like Dreamweaver to create my emails; kind of defeating the purpose you might say yet, I just think phplist is best suited to manage the actual message delivery system itself.

The Multiple List Management feature, for example, is great for if you need to have more than one list (as it lets you assign lists to List Managers, who can manage their users and lists,) likewise the Message Queue ensures that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies of the same message, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list!

Similarly Dreamweaver is better suited to handle HTML as it provides a number of easy ways to display your images and control your text with style sheets in HTML.

Regardless of what HTML editor you choose here’s are few things to remember.

1 - Always use absolute URLS for your graphics (ie http://foamers.net/newsletter/pics/issue2.gif )

2 - Do not save your images as attachments (nobody in their right mind will ever open some strange attachment,) but store them on your web server so that they may display properly in the email.

3 - Send it to yourself before sending it to your subscriber list. And if possible send it to a buddy who has a different email program than you, to be sure most of your subscribers can read it on their computers.

4 - Once your satisfied with your newsletter, save it as a template. Then you can just open the template whenever you want to send html mail and most of the work will be done for you.

5 - If you still feel uncomfortable around HTML I highly recommend that you go on a multimedia or web design course just to get a feel for the fundamentals – and to pick the brains of other Internet entrepreneurs, which is always useful. One way to learn from us right here is simply to subscribe to this feed. And should you wish to have me customize your HTML email template newsletter (at just $180 a pop,) jump over to the contact form and tell me what you think.

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Seems like Flash is on everyone’s mind lately, I get so many emails from new designers and do-it-yourselfers whom have purchased a flash template and lo and behold their saying “Please help before I pull the rest of my hair out!” Ouch, that hurts!

Generally speaking they’re having difficulties figuring out this new medium or just trying to make sense of the whole Flash environment. And who can blame them, lets face it Flash is nothing if not a little fickle.

Personally it’s over a decade since I first started fooling around with the stuff, still I do not consider myself by any means to be an expert, but try to share the many mistakes that I’ve made and the things that have helped me and hopefully that little bit on knowledge can help keep whatever’s left on top of your head where it belongs. I’ll admit to cutting some corners, but what you’ll get are 7 nuggets of prime Flash customization advice. With hidden features explained, myths exposed and tricks uncovered, these tips are all designed to address our most commonly asked questions with all the right remedies.

These are just my seven that I thought were the essentials, but maybe there are some you’d like to share, so if you would like to comment by all means, we love to hear from you, feel free to share your experiences leave us your comments. And as always should you wish to acquire more information about our template customization services simply jump on over to the contact form and let us know what you’re thinking.

1 – Flash is an Artful Dodger

Flash has a stubborn tendency for shutting downs always at the worst possible times, although, I must admit it does bear a knack for inspiring sympathy, you see Flash is always very cordial about it. For example it’ll say something like Flash has encountered a problem and needs to close, (cute little guy, poor thing), and that it is very truly sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s no time to waist, it must relieve itself at once. And me being the agreeable person that I am will simply click Ok and watch desperately as all my work just disappears never to be mentioned again. Of course there are lots of other good reasons for remembering to save frequently that one just so happens to be mine.

There are also several options that you can use to save a file: ‘ Save’, ‘ Save As’, and ‘ Save and Compact’. When you save a file, Flash does not analyze all the data before creating an optimized version of the document. Instead, the changes you make to the document are appended to the end of the .fla file’s data, which shortens the time it takes to save the document. When you select ‘ Save As’ and type a new name for the file, Flash writes a new and optimized version of the file, which results in a smaller file size. When you select ‘ Save and Compact’, Flash creates a new optimized file and deletes the original file.

Caution: When you select ‘ Save and Compact’, you cannot undo any changes you made before you saved the file. On the contrary if you select Save when working with a document, you can undo changes made prior to that save point. Because Save and Compact deletes the earlier version of the file and replaces it with the optimized version, you cannot undo earlier changes.

Remember to use ‘ Save As’ frequently and to type a new file name for your document after every milestone in your project if you are not using version control software to create backups of your .fla file. If you encounter major problems while working on the document, you have an earlier version to use instead of losing everything.

2 - Stop Tinkering And Listen

Before we do anything we first need to carefully install all the fonts that came with the template. Otherwise Flash is going to hit us with a “Missing Font Warning” alert message. That means that we have not installed all of the fonts included in the package, and that could result in a host of other issues. Here’s what we need to do.

1 - Choose “Start > Settings > Control Panel” (Note: In Windows XP, choose “Start > Control Panel“)
2 - double-click on the “Fonts” folder
3 - choose “File > Install New Font”
4 - in the Drives list, select the drive and the folder containing the fonts you want to install
5 - select the fonts to install. To select more than one font, hold down the “CTRL” key and click each font
6 - click “OK” to install the fonts.

Quick Tip! A simpler way to install new fonts is simply to drag and drop all the fonts you want to install onto the “Fonts” folder located within the Control Panel directory.

3 – Putting your text in there

First we should open our “.fla” file from our web design template package in Macromedia Flash. Then if not already open we’ll open the symbols library (hotkey “L”) and browse through it to find the symbol containing the text we want to modify.

What’s nice is that all symbols that contain text have appropriate names such as “Company Name” or “About Us” and we can also see them in the preview window at the top of symbols library panel. If we’re unable to see the text for some reason we’ll probably need to change movie background to a different color other than white, as white text on white background stands invisible.

To do that, we’ll need to choose Modify/Document… from the top menu and change background color in popup window.

Once we have what we’re looking for we want to double click the symbols icon to show text symbol in main workspace window. Then we’ll simply double click that text with “Selection Tool” or single click it with “Text Tool” (hotkey “T“) to edit the contents.

4 - Changing images in Flash

A: Open your source “FLA” file in Adobe Flash and press “F11” to launch symbols library. To perform search of a needed image symbol will be easier if you sort them “by kind” simply by pressing “kind” tab at the top of symbols list. You’ll see that all bitmap symbols are grouped now at the top of the whole symbols library.

Browse these symbols to find symbol your want to substitute. You can see symbols preview at the top of symbols library. When you have found necessary bitmap symbol double click the icon on the left of it as to see the symbol properties window.

You’ll see image preview and options there. Check the image size. It looks like 284 x 423 pixels at 32 bits per pixel. To make your image fit the original effects and animation the best way your image must be exactly the same size as in the original image.

You can resize or crop your image using Adobe Photoshop. Open your image in it using “File/Open…” from the top menu. To resize or crop choose “Image/Image Size…” or “Image/Canvas Size…” accordingly. Then save image using “File/Save As…”, for using it in flash choose one of the following image formats: “JPEG”, “GIF” or “PNG”.

Press “Import” button on the left and browse to location of your image file.

At the bitmap symbols properties window you can change the image quality. Make it lower to reduce published file size. Now you should publish your flash movie.

Quick Tip! You can actually publish your movie directly from “Publish Settings” window, see “Publish” button at the bottom. Or you can publish it from every point of Adobe Flash by pressing “SHIFT+F12″ hotkey.

5 - Making The Contact Form Work

This is a real common question but I think I already covered it in detail over on another post so I’ll just give you the link. http://foamers.net/blogger/archives/45

6 – Duplicating symbols

There are times when you need to make customizations to an instance of a symbol without editing the original so that those changes don’t reflect in any other instances of the symbol on your template or affect the symbol in your Flash Library. For example you might want to add a whole new page or you may need to add an extra button etc. Thats when duplicating a symbol comes in handy because it lets you use an existing symbol ( any item in the library) as a starting point for creating a new symbol.

Open your source “FLA” file in Adobe Flash and press “F11” to launch symbols library. From library, what we need to do is right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) the symbol, select Duplicate Symbol and give the duplicate symbol it’s name.

Next, drag the symbol unto the stage and give it an instance name. Note an instance name and a symbol name are tow totally different things. Meaning, that while there may be two or more instances of the same symbol with the same name “symbol 1”, each instance must have assigned a unique identifier (e.g. instance name) for all ActionScrip reference purposes.

To edit the symbol, you simply double click the symbol to access it in the Main Area. Then double click the text area and enter your own slogan. Once you edit a symbol, Flash updates all the instances of that symbol in your document. You can customize all other Flash elements by repeating these simple steps.

7- SEO for my Flash Template

Can Flash really be made to be search engine friendly? Surprisingly the answer is yes in fact all you have to do is follow these 3 simple steps.

Step 1: When you are finished customizing and or coding your Flash template, go to File -> Publish Settings. Click on the HTML tab and check the “Detect Flash Version” option. You should set this to the lowest possible version that supports the code used in your movie (ActionScript 3.0 cannot be lower than version 9).

Step 2: Open up the HTML file in the HTML text-editor of your choice. You will notice that there is a section of JavaScript code that detects the users Flash Player version. If they have a version equal to or higher than the version you specified in your Publish Setting in step 1, the Flash .swf file will play as planned. You will also notice that there is a place in the js code that reads something to the effect of “var alternate content = “”.

If the user has an older version of Flash than specified in step 1, then this content will be displayed instead via JavaScript (remember to escape quotes in the variable using backslashes). This is where you can include the Flash movie’s content in HTML, and it is completely readable by robots and site crawlers.

Step 3: “What if the user’s browser does not support JavaScript?,” you might ask. Well, that base is covered too. Just under the JavaScript section discussed in step 2, there is an opening and closing tag. You can also put all of the alternate (HTML version) Flash content in between these tags. This serves as a second fallback for Flash.

In summary, if the user does not have Flash, or the version of Flash is too old, then the alternate JavaScript content you defined will try to display instead. If the user’s browser does not have JavaScript, then the “noscript” content will display. Moreover, you have the HTML version of your content being read and indexed by the site crawlers twice! This content can also be styled using CSS like a traditional web page. You can even go so far as to use the same CSS stylesheet to style your Flash and your HTML, but that is a lesson for another day (see Stylesheets, Flash and XML for Dummies).

This article was recently dugg so if you’d like to show your support I’d really appreciated.

Special thanks to Aaron Waldon for #7

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Back in the day, if you had told me some little animation app would catch on as quickly and as suddenly as Flash. I would have said you were an idiot. And if I had told you that Flash would become the design and development community’s number one tool you probably would have said I was an idiot in return.

That’s what makes Flash such an amazing program. Not only did this small animation app come

full circle, but it led also to the creation of some of the most groundbreaking, incredible and right down crazy cool websites you ever did see.

Through my work at premier template customization site (http://foamers.net) I’ve worked with a number of different clients and projects to attain their unique online presence through the template customization process.

Briefly, the template customization process is the method where with we customize the look and feel of the website template and then merge it with your own content files to create a website that’s both unique and can adapt to each individual client’s needs.

And so, over the years I’ve had the opportunity to see and work with both the best of the best and worst of the worst Flash template ever. The top 5 templates of all time are not easy to compile, but since I’m a firm believer in the notion that you, me, all of us have the ability to teach ourselves anything just as long as the inspiration and desire are there, my attempt focuses primarily on website templates which not only brought us some amazing visuals, but that also generously taught me so many neat new tricks.

Do you agree with my selection? Do you think I’m being too uncritical of the ones I’ve picked, or which one do you think is the best? Lets talk about it – add comment

Number 5

I really like the whole two toned very retro atmosphere here and specially the little mp3 player at the bottom because I can take that whole movie clip and reuse it on any other projects. Template No. 20164 is an original design by author Oldman. Ever since it’s release date it has had 1 download. And there’s even a non-Flash version also included with this template.

Number 4

This one really blows you away. It’s a perfect example of what Flash 8’s all new filters were created for. I love how the animation transitions perfectly smooth, and the blurring on the big numbers for each page its really neat also.

And not only do you get the source FLA files, but also all of the PSD files are available too so you can look at all the different layers, filters and masks that went into the making. Template No. 18708 is an original design by author Maxwell. Ever since it’s release date it has had 1 download.

Number 3

There’s nothing really too fancy about this one maybe other than that whole panoramic slide with the scene effect. What I really like about it is that the author made full use of vector graphics, as well as some very useful ScrollPane components. Template No. 18668 is an original design by author Modlin.

Number 2

Perhaps the most radical innovation in Flash as far as website templates concern is XML Flash Sites, this is just one I choose only because it came with a gallery but there’s lots more and they all come equipped with a system that allows you to edit its content without having to use the Adobe Flash software.

So you don’t have to learn any Flash you simply edit the template’s content from a text editor; so if you’re just starting to learn about Flash and would like to see hands-on how Flash and XML work together this is the perfect way to play around and start getting your hands dirty. Template No. 20234 is an original design by author Cowboy.

Number 1

Drum roll, please… “Straight in at number on!” Ok, here we go… the best Flash template ever is Template No. 20361 an original design by author Hugo and one of the true innovations in cutting-edge web design! It’s based on ActionScript3 and made with the PaperVision 3D engine (An open source 3D engine for Flash), which features an impressive 3D interface as well as a wide range of other really neat stuff.

Just like the method used in XML Flash Sites this one allow you to circumvent the need to modify FLA source files whenever you need to change some text or move stuff around etc, etc.

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