Aldebaran Web Design's Blog

Clients often have free emails accounts when they start a website design project, and one of the decisions they need to make is whether to stick with their free email account or whether to utilize an email account that’s based on their website domain name. This post will review the pros and cons associated with each.

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How do you know what a domain name is actually worth? If you want to buy it, how do you know whether you’re paying too much for it? Tonight just for grins and giggles, I decided to see who owned Aldebaran.com - it redirected to another website, which meant to me that it wasn’t being used - so I figured I’d contact the owner and see if they wanted to sell it.

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When new websites are “born”, it make take a while for them to start getting search engine traffic. And you can’t get search traffic from a search engine until they have visited your website and “crawled” over it’s pages. It’s important for new website owners to know how to tell if and when search engines, like Google, the most important search engine, has come and crawled around their website. But how do you tell when Google has visited your website?

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Anyone can put a Google AdWords Qualified Individual or Company logo on their website. So how is a small business owner to know that the person or company who claims to be qualified is really actually certified by Google? (Note, I am no longer a Qualified Individual as I let my certification lapse)

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This article is written for clients who may have just had their ECT (Ecommerce Templates) online store upgraded to a new version. One of the wonderful things about using ECT for your online store, is that they are very dedicated to continually improving their product, and come out with updates (newer versions) on a very regular basis. How do you, as an ECT store owner get the most out of your upgrade? Read on.

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I work on website redesigns, which means I often work in a temporary subdirectory. When I’m ready to launch the website, I move the files from their temporary home, into their permanent home, typically under the root of the website. But if I’ve installed WebYep on a client’s website, moving these files will break things, and since I can’t find this on WebYep’s FAQ page, I’m posting it here in the hopes of helping others.

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If you’re undertaking a new website design, one of the things to consider is whether you want to have a custom logo designed, or simply use clip art or stock photography for your website. Since one of my clients, Jefferson Coulter, is a trademark attorney in Seattle, I asked him to write an article about this topic.

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I receive link exchange requests often, and will share the most ridiculous ones I receive with you for two reasons. First, I want you to know when to decline these. Secondly, I don’t want you to actually hire a company that has people send out these awful, illogical, useless requests.

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I often receive requests from people I don’t know asking me to exchange links. Exchange means that they’ll put a link on their website to me if I put a link on my website to them. Then we’d become one big happy link family. And the more links to your website, the better, right?

Well, it depends.

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So you want to start a blog and become a blogger? I recommend you don’t use Blogger or another service that forces you to have a domain like yourblog.blogspot.com or yourblog.wordpress.com - but rather, strongly encourage you to buy your own domain and set up web hosting for your blog. I know this sounds complicated, but in the long run, it’s very affordable, around $10 per month - and you have complete control over your blog. I often get asked to set up blogs on client’s websites - and have run into some issues with different hosting companies - so this article will detail what to look for in a hosting company with blogging in mind.

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