Today’s topic is targeted at website creators and promoters. Although I’ve worked with the design team here at Intrigue at helping build our corporate site, we haven’t fully explored the various options at promoting it. So I decided to do some research and learn some of the techniques needed at telling the world about Intrigue and intriguegraphics.com.
I created this blog as an adjunct to our main site. It’s partially an experiment and partially an indirect way to draw traffic in to our main site. Along the way, I’ve picked up many bits of tid that I get to implement over time. It’s about learning what works and there’s a bit of trial and error – and a whole lot of research to see how other people do this.
After spending a bit of time perusing some web marketing forums, I’ve picked up a few techniques that people can use to help promote their sites and or blogs and to help drive traffic to them.
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When you talk about scripting and/or programming, the average person looks at you with the “deer in the headlights” look. Unless you are a programmer yourself, there is something about this topic that makes most computer users cringe and recoil in horror.
These are people who are very happy to use their Mac or Windows PC as-is to get things done. Even though I’m not a programmer myself, I’ve had enough experience to realize that there are MANY tasks that people do that can be either enhanced, done quicker or done more efficiently through the use of automated scripts.
Years ago, I took a couple of classes in BASIC programming. As long as the programs were short and sweet, I was able to follow along and understand the logic. But once more bells and whistles were added, I found myself falling further and further behind. After a certain point of complexity, I was not enjoying it at all. I did find it interesting in that someone who knows what they are doing can get a computer to do some amazing things. But it just wasn’t for me.
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About a year ago, I posted about an Apple repair where it was not covered by Applecare. We had a relatively new Intel iMac begin to malfunction severely outside of the one year warranty. It was a helpless feeling to know that fixing it would require spending some money and time at an Apple store to remedy the situation.
Well, it was a gamble and in that case it didn’t work out. Recently, I had the opposite experience. My own personal iMac at home began to malfunction in a similar fashion. It was fine one day, and unusable the next. The hard drive decided it was retiring from active service.
The first thing I did – after taking a deep breath – was to check if my iMac was covered by Applecare. I couldn’t remember for sure. I had to scramble to find my paperwork (computer stuff is filed together at home). What a pleasant surprise it was to discover that not only did I get Applecare with the iMac, but I was still covered for it! Read More…
While doing my proofreading duties, I often see patterns regarding mistakes people make in the layout. Like most things, when something is done in error once, there is a good chance it may get repeated another time. People are people and mistakes are to be expected. I see this all the time in copy we receive from our clients and customers.
None of that bothers me. What I do find irksome is when I check a job and see that people repeat the same bad habits they learned in English class years before and have no idea that there is a problem. That might be simple spelling errors or an incorrect usage of a word, or lousy grammar. While I’m certainly no expert on the English language, and make a bunch of errors myself, I can say that I worked hard in my English classes. My efforts help Intrigue quite a bit today as there are errors aplenty in copy and texts. Read More…
When I saw the news item the other day, I was blown away. Is it really 20 years since Adobe Photoshop was introduced to the universe? Unbelievable…
In the computing industry, there are a handful of applications that have had major impacts on the world and how people get their creative work done. Photoshop is one of those programs. The impact it has had is immeasurable and it has forever changed the way we look at images in print and on screen. It has gotten so big that “photoshop” has become a verb, for manipulating images. What is amazing to me is that this ONE, almost magical program has created an industry all its own and many careers and businesses have been built up around it. I include myself in that statement as I have found Photoshop to be an indispensable tool.
Yes, indeed – I can honestly say I recall when Photoshop 1.0 came out for the Macintosh in 1990. I had been using an Apple IIe for about seven years and had been following the Macintosh saga closely. I remember thinking that upgrading to a Mac would be a good idea, as it could help me out with my Architectural projects at school and for doing reports. Read More…
As someone who works with both especially large and numerous files on a daily basis, “storage” is a very important issue. Working in a design studio, you quickly see how important it is to have sufficient storage to hold ALL the “live” files AND for adequate backups.
Although we do archive (to DVDs) and delete older projects periodically, it is quite staggering how many gigs of information we currently have in active use. As the company IT guy at Intrigue, it is my responsibility to make sure we have the storage space that we need and that all critical files are backed up on a regular basis. This is no small task as more files are created than deleted on a regular basis. This means that over time, our storage needs will always continue to increase. That requires a plan of action.
Believe it or not, but 8 years ago, we were humming along with about 80 gigabytes worth of storage on our only fileserver. THAT was ALL! And it worked ok for a while. I just have to laugh at that number now because we have exceeded that by about a factor of 100 in the years since. Yes, we’ve gone all out and increased our file storage considerably – this was not optional – it was essential due to the jobs we are constantly bringing in-house on a regular basis. Read More…
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