In the wake of all the hub-bub surrounding the passing of the Torch in the upper corporate echelons of Ebay, and the unwelcome Ebay Fee changes that came with it that resulted in an Ebay Seller Boycott, what hasn’t emerged is a clear alternative to Ebay. Well, I have one to suggest.

Most of the sellers getting the biggest shaft on Ebay are the ones with unique and unusual products, which are the products that most lend themselves to a specialized and niche marketed Custom Ecommerce Website of their own. Whether the person sells wonderful Art Pottery from the old specialty potteries of Weller, Rookwood, and Roseville, or they’re selling antique Irish Lace, or they’re selling unique self-created Art-To-Wear, or other cool things, this particular type of seller will do well with their own little web boutique, if the design, setup, configuration, and SEO are handled properly.

Will this make you, a currently struggling Ebay seller, money overnight? No. But getting set up with an ecommerce site now, and working for good positioning in the SERPs between now and next Christmas, will make a big difference in how your business grows. Or not. And with no waiting period for funds to clear from Paypal. For less than many sellers pay in fees for a couple few months of an Ebay Shop, you can have your own Custom Ecommerce Website, with a slick interface, a great design, simple navigation, and good SEO. That’s a one time design/config/setup fee. Hosting and domain name registration are separate fees.

As any of my former clients will tell you, I do what I can to give my folks a leg up in the SERPs, and with a properly designed ecommerce site coupled with my Secret Weapon for good Search Engine Positioning, the investment you make in your business now will be returned to you many times over, and with no more Ebay Hassle! And if you found me the way most people do, you know I do okay at it.

If you’re one of the people getting shafted in the Ebay shuffle, I’d be happy to speak with you about getting your business onto its own website and getting you off Ebay.

[tags]Alternative to Ebay, Ecommerce Website Design, Ebay Shop Alternative[/tags]

Safari is one of the good browsers, right?

I sometimes wonder, since its behavior is not always identical to the OTHER good browsers, Firefox and Opera (especially the windows version of Safari, which refuses to show css chosen fonts for ANY h elements, a bizarreness beyond belief and very annoying.)

Well, according to a poster on the CSS-Discuss list, there is a safari only filter. It’s been written up on the Brunildo site, along with some other Browser Specific Filters, and I trust Bruno to get things right and test them properly.

This is a quirksmode hack, so you need to have something prior to the doctype declaration to kick all browsers into quirks mode. Fix whatever needs adjusting in the other browsers to reflect the quirksmode trigger, then use this for Safari on the element that’s misbehaving:


body:first-of-type selector { property: value; }


[tags]Safari Filter, CSS Hacks, Cross Browser Compatibility[/tags]

Sometimes it’s the small details in a web design that make it distinctive, whether it be icons or bullets or some other small element used as a bar between articles or posts on a blog, or combined into a border between elements. And there is no better way to create these elements than using one of the thousands of Dingbat Fonts available for free on the web!

Dingbats are scalable to be any size you wish, from tiny to huge, and can be filled with any color, gradient, or texture you want, so using them as a large background image or creating a very smallscale overall wallpaper is an easy operation in any good web graphics program. They can be created as a background bullet for lists, or used as an iconic element in a frame. They can be high contrast for an eye grabber, or very low contrast as an overall background.

There are so many decorative dings, and ones that are germane to a number of subject areas that it’s pretty easy to find a ding font that will suit whatever project you’re working on, whether it be a business project that requires simple icons, or a themed site that can benefit from decorative elements that match its subject matter.

The general font sites, such as my fave, DaFont.com, have a good overall selection of dingbat fonts which are arranged by subject matter, but there are also some really stellar sites out there that specialize in DingBat Fonts. Here are a few for you to enjoy.

• DingBats-UK– though this isn’t the easiest of the font sites to use, it does, however, have links to Ding Fonts (and other fonts!) you won’t find anywhere else. It’s well worth poking around in here, since you may find that font that’s been buried for years and is perfect for your needs. Expect to waste a few hours if you get started. This one is a VAST resource.
• The DingBat Pages– nicely organized archive with a fair bit of stuff in it.
• DingBat Depot– another well arranged DingBat specific archive.
• Pure Confection DingBats– There are both free and pay dings here. Very SWEET!

And here are some ideas on how to use those DingBat fonts:

• DingBats- Design Elements to Go
• 3D DingBats, a tutorial series
• CommunityMX, Fun with WingDings and WebDings

Have FUN!

[tags]Designing with DingBats, Icon Design, Bullet Design, Border Design[/tags]

If you’re an SEO Tool Junkie like I am, you’ll love this new online SEO software I found. SheerSEO.com will track your google SERPs for your chosen keyphrases, track your pages in the serps, your referrers, your indexed pages, and lots more. The different screens are easy to decipher, and allow you to check both Google and Yahoo results.

I especially like the way it shows how keyphrases rank in the results, and which page the results are pointing at, so you can clearly see if your optimization on certain pages has had the desired effect.

Eyal, the master coder who put this together, has lots more features coming in the future. Currently there’s a keyword density tool. A similar tool to measure keyphrase density is on the drawing board.

I hope you enjoy playing with this as much as I have. Even better, I hope you learn as much about your site as I did about mine.

[tags]SEO, SERPs, Google, Yahoo, Search Engine Optimization, SEO tool[/tags]

We who design websites and test in multiple browsers need to note that an Auto Update is scheduled for February 12th to upgrade all IE users to IE7.

The reason this is important to WebDevs is that many corporate networks will not be installing this upgrade, so we will still have to keep testing in IE6. If your machine is scheduled to RECEIVE auto updates and you wish to continue to test IE6, that puts you in a bind.

I have two windows machines, one with IE7 installed, and one with IE6 installed. I’ve consequently shut off Auto Updates on the machine with IE6, so that I can continue to run IE6 on that machine. There is a downside to this since I’ll have to remember to check for updates myself, and manually go through the list to delete the IE7 upgrade from the upgrade list.

Is it possible that there may be some issues with this for those who are running a side by side installation of IE6 and IE7? I’d want to know about it ahead of time, if so.

More on this for network owners here and here.

[tags]IE7 Auto Update February 12, Windows Auto Update, Web Design Cross Browser Testing[/tags]