Online Wall Prints Gallery

One website that we built and continue to work on has become one of the UK’s leading suppliers of wall art, namely canvas prints and acrylic art. Fotoviva Art Prints was launched in 2006 with a limited collection of images available but it has now grown into a fully recognised online gallery studio with over 600 image prints available. They now support a group of artistic photographers who sell their imagery through the website which means there is a wide range of image types to choose from.

There are many gallery sites around the internet selling canvas art but one of Fotoviva’s strongest selling points is the quality of every single image they have – they are absolutely stunning! From dreamy seascape prints to delicate floral art, the standard of photography is some of the best out there.

Together with updates to the website, we also offer SEO (search engine optimisation) for Fotoviva Art Prints which has helped propel them into a position where they rank very well in a highly competitive market. This is an ongoing process but is proving highly effective for the company.

Each image in the galleries is offered printed on canvas which is the most popular form of wall art at the moment. These canvases can vary in size and even the large triptych canvas prints are available. This is when a photo is printed across 3 canvas panels for a continuous effect. Another upcoming trend in wall art is the acrylic print which boasts a glossy and contemporary finish, suitable for modern homes.

The website has a secure store whereby when a customer has chosen a print they can add it to their basket and pay for it online. It uses the Paypal system so is very secure for online art orders. The prints are then delivered within a few days tot he customer’s home or office.

If you are looking for some canvas prints or acrylic art for your home or office walls then take a look at www.fotoviva.co.uk

Socialmonkee – FREE Backlinks for your website!

Everyone with a website needs backlinks pointing to their site. This tells the search engines that your site is approved by other websites, thus encouraging a higher position in the search engines for your search terms. So how do you go about getting backlinks?

SocialMonkee is a free link building service which gives you 25 backlinks every day! Simply follow the link to signup and you can get 25 links to your site within minutes.
Building backlinks to your pages is an essential part of SEO beacuse it helps your pages get indexed faster, which is important because you want the search engines to find them as soon as possible. Also it helps your pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice. The more backlinks you have, the better.

However, building backlinks can be a time-consuming process. You can outsource the process to an agency and pay a lot of money… Or you can do it yourself with SocialMonkee! SocialMonkee is an instant backlink builder allowing you to build 25 unique backlinks, every day, FREE! All links are on unique C-Class IP addresses and domains. Imagine being able to create 25 unique backlinks every day, with the click of a button, FREE!

So, 25 unique backlinks every day… That’s a total of 175 backlinks every week, 750 every month. If you upgrade, you will be able to build 100 uniques backlinks, 3 times a day! That’s a total of 2,100 backlinks every week, 9,000 every month!

Submitting a page to SocialMonkee via the members area takes under two minutes, but there’s an even faster way! They created a Firefox plugin that allows you to submit your page to up to 100 sites in just a few clicks, using nothing else than Firefox! If you have a Premium Account you will also get access to link reports and RSS feeds, which are great to keep track of your backlinks and get them indexed fast. Submitting your RSS feeds to RSS submitters is actually a very important step in link building.

So what are you waiting for? Join SocialMonkee now while it’s still free!

Testing Websites on Internet Explorer

I’ve just come across a great website which allows us Mac users a way of seeing how our web development looks on the pain-in-the-butt Windoze browser known as Internet Explorer. The site is called NetRenderer and is quick, acurate and free.

Simply type your url in the field and choose between IE 5.5, 6, 7 or 8 and in a few seconds it will display a screenshot of how your website work looks in IE.

Us web designers find IE a real pain because of its lack of internet standards. We’re itching to use the beautiful CSS3 but it doesn’t play ball with any new web standards. Until then we just have to hack and test until we get websites that look the same across all major browsers. If only all browsers were as good as Safari…

Global Training Services

Offering Forklift Truck Training services throughout the UK, Global Training Services have been a client of Viper Design for a few years now. The owner contacted me last year to try and target specific areas for their training services to try and extend their online presence. Initially I created a new page on their website to target Forklift Training in Redditch. Despite only a handful of links pointing to that specific page, I managed to get it on page one for that search term. Not a highly competitive search admittedly but it shows what can be done with good on-page optimisation and a few links. It’s not about scamming the search engines but letting them know clearly what the page is about so it can be clearly defined in their ranking algorithm.

A few months later they came back to me to try and target the West Midlands area for their main search terms, such as forklift truck training, forklift certification workshops, crane safety etc. Clearly targeting such a large area with a single page was going to be a lot harder. We created the West Midlands Forklift Truck Training page to see how that progressed. We may need to build a few more links to boost the position in a few weeks.

Global Training Services are friendly and down to earth, whilst providing a professional service to their clients – I highly recommend them. As well as forklift training they also offer Counterbalance, reach and narrow aisle truck workshops, Overhead Crane Lifting & Slinging Training, Abrasive Wheels workshops, Tower Scaffolding Training, HIAB lorry loader training, Pedestrian Pallet/Stacker, Bendi Pivot Steer & Rough Terrain Telescopic handler courses, Manual Handling workshops, Mobile Elevating Work Platform certificates and Lift Truck Safety Awareness amongst others. They are based in Worcester but can provide these training workshops across the UK and they also have several clients across Europe.

They used to spend hundreds of pounds advertising in the Yellow Pages and on Yell.com but found that it was money wasted down the drain. After initially optimising the site so the search engines knew what their company was all about, they began ranking very well and now don’t bother with the YP or Yell because the SEO I have done for them produces better leads and costs far less. Result!

New Client – J Pack Building Services Worcester

Recently I have created a single page website for a builder in Worcester called J Pack Building Services. James called me to discuss the project and to test the waters of having a web presence, we decided to keep the costs down and build a single page static site to see how that worked for his business.

The aim is to attract local business in the Worcester and Worcestershire area for this family run builder. This therefore involved making sure there were several keywords included in the text content such as ‘builder’ and ‘worcester’. These keywords, and more, were also added to the ALT TAGS behind the images and the META TITLE TAGS to ensure search engines like Google understood clearly what the page was focussed on, without appearing spammy or confusing for human reading.

James wanted to focus on ‘builder in worcester’ as the primary keyphrase. A single page site will be more difficult to target due to the lack of content but with a local target we should be ok. A few external links pointing to the website should help his rankings. A Google Map listing will also be included. We will follow his rankings over the next few weeks and see how this progresses.

Curved Corners using CSS3 Trickery

Ok, so curved corners has been around for a while but it has always been a bit of a problem ensuring browser compatible. Not to mention the various code hacks and image made versions that take ages to fathom.

Enter CSS3 which offers an easy peasy way to create lovely rounded corners for html block elements. The following will create rounded corners for any browser that supports CSS3:

.rounded-corners {
-webkit-border-radius: 7px;
-khtml-border-radius: 7px;
-moz-border-radius: 7px;
border-radius: 7px;
}

.rounded-various {
-moz-border-radius-topleft:3ex;
-moz-border-radius-bottomright:3ex;
-webkit-border-top-left-radius:3ex;
-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:3ex;
}

But what about clumsy old (or new) Internet Explorer that for some reason doesn’t understand this funky webkit lark? Grab the sweet little bit of javascript from CurvyCorners.net and this will fix it, Jim. All you need to do is to put the appropriate rounded corner styles into the appropriate rules, and CurvyCorners will automatically draw corners for the affected boxes, whilst leaving it to the newer browsers to draw them using their native CSS3 methods.

It works a treat and you can even specify which corners you want to be curved and the size of the radius. Just match it to your CSS3 corner code and you will have fully functioning curved corners on your site. Of course, it will be much simpler when IE and Opera get their acts together and support CSS3 for us web designers. It can truly enhance the web design process whilst reducing the amount of code and images required for such tasks, thereby allowing browsers to load our pages faster.

Try some rounded corners on your next website. From a design perspective, I would try to keep them restrained. A little goes a long way with rounded corners. Even a radius of 2px can transform a block element without making it look tacky. Also have a go at rounding just a couple of the corners, like the top right and bottom left for a nice design effect.

Smashing Design Inspiration!

As designers sometimes we have days when the creative juices just don’t flow. In fact they don’t even trickle. Other days the inspiration kicks in instantly and the artwork almost builds itself like it has a mind of its own.

For those other days, you could do worse than have a look at the brilliant online resource for designers and web developers called Smashing Magazine. Although it’s not a magazine, duh! Simply a great resource for design inspiration with hundreds of ‘Top 10′ type posts on everything from logo design to website header inspiration.

The site is very active, with new ideas posted every day so the content is always fresh. It’s a good way to keep abreast of the latest design trends and it can be useful to kick-start creative thinking for just about any design project.

If you are a Twitter fan then add Smashing Magazine to your friends for all the latest updates. You simply can’t go wrong! They also have a Smashing Network that features manually selected articles from the best design blogs around.

Introducing the Viper Design Blog

Thanks for stopping by the brand new blog for Viper Design. Here you will find updates from my design studio in Worcester which has been providing graphic design and website development for over 8 years.

The design world is constantly evolving with new trends and software enhancements so here you will find news about new Viper clients, designs and market movements. Feel free to drop me a line or comment on my articles – feedback is always good!

If you require a friendly designer for your business print or web work please call me on 01905 754686 or see my main website at www.viperdesign.net

Best regards,
Jason Wickens