Top 10 Downloaded Screen savers

1. Goldfish Aquarium
2. Christmas 3D Animated
3. Aquarium
4. Matrix Code Emulator
5. Sponge Bob Underwater
6. Playboy Ladys -)
7. Mechanical Clock 3D Screen
8. 3d Animated Under The Sea
9. 3D Aqua Clock Screensaver
10. Wilderness Waterfalls

Tired of waiting for the Web Designer to make minor updates on your site?  Consider having CMS (Content Management Software) installed.  What a CMS does is keep the look and feel of your current site (or you can update the look at the same time) and it allows you to make photo and text changes yourself.  As simple to use as a word processor, you can have changes done in just a few minutes - the learning curve is quite fast and easy for even non-technical types to master!

How does it work?

A CMS installs a few dozen to a few hundred files on a compatible host that are essentially a word processor for the web.  Within these files are specially designed "templates" - or the basic look of your website.  When you add a page, it draws from these templates to create the new page. Most CMS programs have a common area where you first upload your images, then you simply insert them into your page.  Most allow you to change the type size, style, underline, bold, justify, add live links, resize images and more.  Sometimes the style of type you are allowed to use is restricted so that you will not break the design's look. 

Two things to consider with a CMS are: (1) is your hosting up to par?  Most require PHP, ASP or some other programming language and database capabilities. Some have auto-installers that make updating the program much easier. (2) How complex a CMS do you need.  There are CMS's that are functionally quite complicated - they can insert parts of pages as a unit, expire a page after a certain period of time, and allow multiple users to log in and update restricted areas of content, among a myriad of other features.   The most economical CMS' are just coded areas added to an existing website that make it "editable".  These do not usually allow page additions, but can have sometimes have multiple users.  It  can be more difficult to estimate an addition of this nature because it's addition is dependent on what was done when the site was originally built. How a site was built will determine if this kind of CMS can be "inserted". In between, there are the mid-range CMS' which are built as part of the website itself.  These are generally the easiest to use and are fully incorporated as the back end (or skeleton) of the site.  For this reason they often require a site redesign.

Obviously, the more features you need, the more expensive it gets, but a mid-range CMS can be added to a redesign quite reasonably. Most small business websites can do just fine with an intermediate or small solution.  Contact us for an estimate.

Did you know Dark Chocolate:

1. Lowers blood pressure by dilating blood vessels
2. Reduces risk of diabetes by reducing blood sugar and insulin
3. Activates enzymes that eliminate cancer-causing carcinogens and mutagens
4. Lowers the risk of blood clots
5. Keeps cholesterol levels stable or may even improve them
6. Increases cognitive function in the brain

Pass the chocolate please!

Did you know...5 Natural Pest Repellents 

With Summer approaching maybe these will help us avoid toxic chemicals in our environment. Here are safer alternatives to commercial pesticides:

Ants: sprinkle cinnamon, bay leaves, cayenne pepper or baby powder in problem areas and along baseboards and windowsills.

Mosquitoes: Mix 2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water placed on your deck or balcony or dab lavender oil on your wrists & elbows.

Flies: Small sachets of crushed mint placed around the home will discourage flies.  So will a potted sweet basil plant.

Cockroaches: Sprinkle equal parts of baking soda and confectioner' sugar in problem areas.

Mice: Place cotton dipped in peppermint oil near problem areas. Used kitty litter is another repellant.

Don't forget - even if you don't need a website yourself, you can refer a friend! Earn up to $100 cash for each referral that becomes a new customer.  Register Here 

It doesn't matter where you or your friend is located, we can work with clients wherever they are -  by email, phone and fax. We are in Michigan, and have satisfied customers worldwide.  Visit our website at http://c-omalley.com.

At one time, building a website in basic html and frames was state of the art (about 10 years ago).  It seemed very cool that you could put the header on every page and have new content load with every page without having to reload the header.  But there was one downside.  The search engines saw nothing on the page.  Ditto, Nada, Nothing.  All the content was hidden.  Suddenly, as fast as frames became cool, they fell out of favor.  Surprisingly, a few coders are still using them - it takes time and effort to keep up with the times.  

When frames fell out of favor (not to be confused with an iframe which is still a useful tool to bring content into a page), "tables" took over.  They provided a way to display a complicated design in early browsers.  The downside was images had to be "sliced and diced" which is exactly what it sounds like.  The images were chopped up into little pieces and put in table boxes along with the content.  It was rigid but it worked.  However, the search engines weren't that fond of them either as screen readers and search engines had a hard time sorting out what was important and what was a piece of picture because of all the excess code tables generated.  Many sites are still done with tables, mainly because they are easy to build and view ok in most browsers, though they still have serious search issues.  If you're not getting the rankings you desire, it's probably because your site was built with frames or tables.

Then along came CSS and XHTML.  Finally a solution to the search engines seeing code hieroglyphics instead of content!  Items could be placed on the page without junk code littering the page and confusing the search engines!  The search engine saw content FIRST, and indexed a page properly.  It wasn't perfect (not every browser wanted to agree once again), but it worked better than the other two and gave sites a fighting chance on the search engines.  Most good developers now build this way, and sites that are redesigned with CSS tend to go right to the top of search when they have old-style frame & table competition. 

So a good reason for updating and improving your site is that technology has moved on.  A site that was state of the art even 3 years ago is probably showing it's age (my guess is it was done with tables).  When you don't keep up, you fall behind.  The advantage of using CSS is that if you ever decide to change your site's look, it's a much simpler process.  CSS incorporates the advantages of frames (only one heading to change) with the layout ability of tables - but it goes one step further - it's fluid rather than rigid, loads pages faster and can adapt better to a wider variety of monitor sizes and resolutions available today - and best of all the search engines LOVE it.

So time marches on...no doubt something one day will replace CSS - but not any time soon because while frames & tables were adaptations to a newly evolving web - sort of a jury-rigged way of displaying images and text early on - CSS is a planned strategy by the web overseers at WC3 - coding developed specifically for displaying complex web pages on a monitor (rather than a cathode ray tube used by the early web). CSS was a language created to grow with the web without necessitating constant "rebuilds".  While your design may one day become "dated" your underlying site structure should not. CSS also make it easier to incorporate dynamic content into your website - a content management system, forums and galleries can be adapted to look and feel like the rest of your site. If you have not had your site recoded into CSS, it could benefit you greatly to have it done. Contact us for an estimate.

25 People that changed the world...

from the book The 100 Greatest Heroes: Inspiring Profiles of One Hundred Men and Women Who Changed the World (Kensington Publishing Corp./Citadel Press: New York City, 2003), written by H. Paul Jeffers.  Would you agree? If not, why?