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[This is a guest post by Lawerence Hall. Lawerence Hall is working as community manager at Go-gulf, a Dubai based web design company that
provides affordable web design and development solutions in the Middle East. ]

Choosing the right color scheme is vital in successful web design. Colors express feelings while bringing attention to areas of interest even before imagery or text begins speaking to a user. The goal here will be to understand what to use and when to use it, that’s where color theory comes in.

Color theory is the set of rules that say which colors work well together and why. Following these rules during your color selection can improve the efficiency of color in design. Here I’ve outlined some popular tools for color selection including color schemers, color palette resources and a few general color theory information sites below.

Kuler : Color Scheme Tool from Adobe

Kuler is Adobe’s free online color schemer. Kuler makes color exploration educational and social. Themes can be generated from scratch or from uploaded images. Using the community functions of the site can provide inspiration. Many user-generated themes are posted and rated here, waiting to be downloaded directly into adobe programs.

ColorsOnTheWeb : Color Wizard Color Scheme Generator

The Color Wizard is a great tool with many options. The greatest function it may have over the others is a quick way to check color variations. When you select the main color you want to work with, there are three boxes that provide various color tones by hue, saturation, and tint. This is a great way to experiment with fine toning your color selection quickly.

Color Scheme Generator 3

This easy to use tool has both a color wheel, and will generate color palettes. It allows for selection of many color theory algorithms and is easy for anyone to understand. It will also has settings to display the chosen color palette for various states of color blindness. The exports are plentiful with options for GIMP, text, HTML, Photoshop, and xml.

Color Hunter

Color Hunter is a nice tool for designing a scheme around a specific picture. After you upload a url or picture file the tool returns a light and a dark set of colors. If you create a login to the site you can save, tag, and rate schemes that you create for other users. Also schemes can be rated to see which ones are the most popular.

WebsiteTips : Colour Scheme Chooser

The SitePro Color Scheme Chooser users sliders instead of a color wheel to aid in color selection. This may be more familiar to people not accustomed to advanced design programs. It also has a drop down menu with seven values to choose from. This is a nice tool to perform quick color scheming tasks.

ColorSpire : Create Website Color Schemes

ColorSpire is a simple scheming tool. It uses a color wheel for color selection on the palette. Instead of working with known color theories it uses the selected base color and users can adjust for brighter, darker, saturation, or just make a random palette. It won’t help sort out usability issues like other tools I’ve listed but its quick and intuitive.

ColorBlender

The Color Blender is another simplified tool. It develops a 6 color pallete based on the main color you select from the slider. Like some of the tools here it includes functions to export pallete files to photoshop or illustrator. They can also be sent by email.

ColorDB

ColorDB is a very robust tool. Upon selecting the base color, variations and harmonies are all shown at the same time. Amongst the harmonies are complimentary, opposite, neutral, shades, split opposite, split complimentary, triadic and tetradic, which you can use to build color schemes from. There is also a color map and memory functions so that you can return to the site later and learn more of its many many functions.

ColorSchemer

The online ColorSchemer is an extremely simplified version of the popular desktop ColorSchemer. Once you simply pick a color it will show you 16 matching colors on the palette. Great way to get a quick look at some possible color combinations.

If any of the above terminology went over your head. Or you if just couldn’t figure out some of the terms and need a good root understanding of how color theory works check out the following sites.

Color Worqx
The Color Worqx website provides a step-by-step tutorial on color theory. It starts from the very basics and builds to very complex ideologies involving color that transcend the boundaries of just web design.

Color Theory – Wikipedia
This is a basic article on the Wikipedia on color theory. It is not as in-depth as the one by Color Worqx, but that makes it a great resource for picking up a quick overview on color theory.

Do you know any more online resources for color scheme generators? Do you use them?

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Hands down, the Internet has changed a lot in the last decade. There are far more people online and there are so many websites to visit now that it is certain that no one will be able to visit each one. Along with this comes the problems like identity theft, and losing a job over material posted online. Michael Arrington writes Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions and discusses this matter.

There are a lot of services that allow anonymous services. It gives the freedom for people to slander your name and not let you defend yourself. With employers looking online (and believe me, they do), you could even have people post embarrassing photos and such.

A lot of these places are actually suppose to collect data on these messages, but I am not sure if employers will ignore past indiscretions if it is published. I do hope that they would do a thorough job in checking backgrounds, but how much should they look into? How can you protect your right to some privacy?

In the case of most jobs, as long as what you say about work is not defamatory, you should be good. It is not hard. If your job is not the greatest, that is your opinion, but do not lie about it. Some employers will harass you and tell you what your rights are, but this is a heads up – like I said, if you are telling the truth, you should not be even in their office being reprimanded.

If you are not certain of your rights, especially for those bloggers in the United States, check out the Election Frontier Foundation on their Legal Guide for Bloggers and Blogger’s Rights.

With the increasing number of services online that allow anonymous interaction, it is important that you take responsibility for anything that is posted about yourself. The first would be taking the time to research. There are tools like StepRep that can help you manage your reputation online.

What do you think about services that allow people to post or send pics or messages anonymously? How much of your background should an employer look into when it comes to finding a job?

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I use to like Internet Explorer. There are some uses – like the fact there are people that use it and view my site with it. However, it seems there are people who missed the updates and still use Internet Explorer 6 (IE6.) I still see people viewing my site in IE6 and know my PNG images look crappy to them. Oh well, I am not changing it for IE6 and I do not optimize sites for it. As a web designer, it is my choice and I am not afraid to tell my clients why I do not.

It is not just about integrity as said in Joseph McCullough’s article IE6 and the Starving Artist, it is about making people aware of how much safer it is to surf without a faulty browser. Funny how the update was missed as when IE7 was released, it came out as an automatic update!

Why is Internet Explorer 6 bad?

The program is not compatible with some css and javascript elements. It is also well known to have many security vulnerabilities.

It is not about being snooty or web standard compliant (okay, well, you should at least try to be W3C compliant), it is about safe surfing. No one likes malware or viruses. Some of them can be a pain to remove or even costly!

While I am not going to slap some code on my site to tell people to update, I am at least writing to tell people that IE6 is dead. As funny as it sounds, there was even a funeral for IE6 too! Google even started phasing out IE6.

So, why not upgrade to Windows IE7 and above? It is available and not really that hard to update. There are also other great browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.

What browser do you like to surf the Internet with?

Some would argue that it is not worth it and is only a system to track traffic. In fact a lot of the traffic they track usually depends on whether or not your visitor installed the Alexa tool bar. So how does Alexa put together a number for each site?

According to Alexa’s FAQ How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined?, traffic rank is determined by the number of uses of their toolbar. The uses are divvied between page views and reach. Even if you visit a site multiple times, your visit is only counted once. Again, this is solely based on Alexa users.

So what could this mean for some people who want to improve it?

This means that you should probably encourage your visitors to download the Alexa toolbar. For those who have websites already, it might be a good thing as there are plugins for Firefox that you can install and monitor your Alexa rank without even directly visiting the site.

Does Alexa Rank Really Matter?

Yes, it does. A lot of ad systems and advertisers look at these ranks to figure out how successful a site is and gauge how many people they could possibly attract through purchasing advertising. Others think of it as a site goal to make a certain number. That is fine too.

People need these type of systems to find some sort of progress. Please do remember that it does take some work to achieve these types of goals. Some webmasters will succeed faster than others due to their website’s topics and their influence within social networks as well as other online communities.

Dan Keller writes in his article How to Improve your Alexa Ranking. You might want to hop on over there and read his post. I do want to note that even though he mentions webmaster, you can pretty much exchange it with your target audience and you will do fine.

Do you know your Alexa rank? Have you already downloaded the Alexa Toolbar? Should website owners pay attention to their rank at Alexa?

[ This is a guest post by Tom Dwyer. Tom Dwyer is former senior interactive marketing executive where he brought cutting edge online solutions to Fortune 500 companies and small business owners all over the country. Tom now spends his time consulting and strategizing with businesses and organizations on how to be heard in today’s crowded interactive world. Learn more from Tom at www.talkingwithtommyd.com. ]

The short answer is yes, if the purpose of the content is to manipulate the search results. It is never a good idea to try and fool the search engines because even if you manage to get one past them eventually it will catch up with you.

The Official Word on Duplicate Content
According to Google’s site they define duplicate content as – “…substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. … Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.”

So why do search engines even care about duplicate content anyways?

Google and other search engines want to avoid including similar pages in their search results because it would compromise their user’s experience. If you think about this for a moment it is actually a good policy on the search engine’s part. Nothing is more frustrating than conducting a search; only to find several different sites that all have the exact same article. Precisely what the search engines are trying to avoid.

How to Avoid a Duplicate Content Penalty
Based on Google’s own words you can clearly see that they try to consider the intent of the content before deciding to impose a penalty. They have the ability to determine if the content they are attempting to index is trying to boost a sites search value by having multiple versions around the web. If they deem it as doing so they will penalize the site by either giving it a low ranking or worse de-indexing the site altogether.

It is very easy to avoid the potential penalty by simply writing your own content. If writing is not your thing then hire a professional writer to ghost write you content for you. You have to remember that your true ultimate goal here is to provide valuable information that your visitor is searching for. By consistently writing compelling and unique content for your audience the likelihood of incurring a duplicate content penalty is practically zero.

Publishing Your Own Content
So let’s say you write an incredible article and you want to submit it to article directories – will that count as duplicate content? The answer is yes but not like you think. You’re not going to incur a penalty with Google for having your article out there on several different article sites but the link value you receive from any links in the article will be diluted.

What you should do to insure that the search engines consider the article you wrote and is hosted on your site as the “official” version is to make certain that you post it on your site first. Once you content is on your site wait to confirm that the search engines have indexed the page before you submit it to any article directories or anywhere else. Any other site that hosts your article later will be considered “duplicate”.

One thing to note, this does not mean that your page will rank before any of the other sites that have your content. There are many factors that go into the ranking of web pages beyond whether it is duplicate or not such as back linking to the page.

Final Word
Duplicate content is real and can affect your online marketing efforts, but if you are seriously trying to market yourself or your business it is unavoidable. Take the simple measures described above and you will be in a better position to avoid being penalized by the search engines.

Moving a site from one domain to a different and taking a whole new name is a tedious process. Of course, anyone could just move on a whim, but that might cause a bit of confusion if your site gets a nice chunk of visitors. Sometimes the reasons behind making this change are important:

1. The previous domain name no longer reflects what you are trying to convey to the public
2. You found a better domain to help brand you either personally, or as a business
3. You hate the domain name and got lucky enough to grab up a cool one
4. You hate the domain name, it is about to expire, and so you found a better one

For what its worth – It happens a lot! However, here are some things you might want to do before you move.

Announce your move ahead of time. You may have just grabbed that domain, and have already started moving the files, but you need to tell your visitors. Two weeks is good. One month is even better.

Move in stages. You should put a redirect on your current site two weeks before you make a final move. Park old domain and redirect it to the new one afterwards if you still own the registration. Whether you keep that domain, sell it, or eventually let it go, for those who missed the memo, this might allow your site to retain as many as your usual visitors.

Inform your link exchanges and affiliates immediately. If you change even your site’s blog address, your link exchanges need to know. These are suppose to be people you have contact with.

Inform all of your visitors and social network followers several times. It might be annoying, but people forget or miss the message because they were not online when you made the site announcement. Make sure to encourage them to subscribe to the new site’s feed, newsletter, and also pass the word on about the exchange.

Tell your search engine that you moved. You can do this by putting a 301 permanent redirect. However, for sites that have been around for years, you might want to park the new domain on top of the other and promote the new one to not lose traffic.

It might seem dumb to have to tell people you moved, but it really is nice to do and allows people to follow you. I have moved in the past and there are people that find me on occasion. Until last year, I still had a very old Geocities site with notice that the site had moved to Blondish.net. I was pleasantly surprised that there were people that were still finding me through there too. Even though Yahoo! Geocities no longer exists, I am grateful to have retained a heavy amount of traffic from my visitors that have been around for the past few years.

What other suggestions do you have for people that are changing their domain name or will be in the near future?

[This is a guest post by Gagandeep Singh. Gagandeep Singh is a freelance writer and mainly writes on social media, making money online, affiliate marketing, web 2.0 and conversion rate optimization. Feel free to contact him on twitter at gagan4687 ]

More than 70% of online buyers visit social media websites before buying anything and around 50% of them take the decision on the basis of the information they get from these websites.* As the impact of social media on consumer behavior is growing at rapid rate it is very important for every business owner to have a presence on these social media websites.

What follows next are the seven tips which will help you in building your presence on social media from scratch.

Defining Objectives- Before working on your social media presence it is very important to figure out what you’re trying to accomplish from it. Are you joining these websites for taking feedback from your customers or for reputation management of your brand or just to increase your brand awareness or to increase your sales? Having clear goals at the beginning will help you to track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.

Be everywhere– Whenever we talk about social media only few popular websites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin comes to the mind. But there are hundreds of websites out there which means that there are hundreds of ways which your customer can use to find you. Try to get listed on as many websites as possible. Use same profile name on all social media websites so that it becomes easy for your users to find you. Connect all of your social media accounts to each other, so that updates in one website appear on your other profiles too and each profile shows the latest information about your company.

Listen first – It is always good to listen to your target audience for few weeks in beginning before participating in conversations with them. Set up alerts for conversation relevant to your industry. You will definitely learn something about your industry from each conversation you listen.

Contribute regularly – Try to be consistent on social media websites. Keep your Twitter and Facebook profile updated with current information. Contribute interesting and useful information to community regularly. The more consistent you will be on social media website, more influence you will have in the community and more quickly you will be building relationships with your target audience.

Be patient- Don’t expect overnight results. It takes time to get noticed on social media platforms depending on the amount of efforts you are putting into it. Don’t get discouraged with failures and learn to deal with negativity. Remember that you are using social media to build relationships and credibility for your brand and it takes lot of time, dedication and hard work to build them.

Launch Contests – Organizing exclusive contests or offering discount coupons is a great way to connect with your target audience. Organizing such contest not only help you to create a buzz amongst your community but also provides you with a great opportunity to interact with your customers and to earn some credibility.

Track results – According to survey by Mzinga and Babson 84% of companies don’t measure results of their social media campaigns which mean that they are making their strategy on the basis of mere predictions. So don’t do the same mistake. It is very important to find out which social media sources are sending you most of the traffic and why? Why you are getting poor results from few? Each social media platform has its own ecosystem and rules. Monitor results and continue your campaign with the top performers.

Creating a presence on social media websites is not difficult but it demands lot of time, effort and patience from you. I hope that these seven tips will help you whenever you jump to social media bandwagon.
* – Related Resource: Marketing Vox, Nearly 70% of Online Adults Use Social Media, Often Research Products

Come on, really? Well, it was enough to read this over several sites, including a recent WebProNews article named Do Facebook and Twitter Threaten or Complement the News Industry?. A lot of news syndications have handles online and I doubt they are hurting. In fact, the choice to have an internet handle, I am pretty sure it has been a great help. People are spending more time online than they did years ago, so of course, even big news stations want a piece of the attention. In fact, Nielsen Ratings published in December 2009 that users were spending over 5 and a half hours on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Apparently this was an 82% increase from 2008′s statistics.

However, let me share this. Those social networks are made of people sharing information from various sources, including news sites like Yahoo!, CNN, MSN, TechCrunch, Mashable, and more. There is a wealth of information being passed around and retweeted or shared. This takes nothing away from news sites. Social network sites are a means to share the news with others who have similar interests. I do not have to be the one to tell those reading this article. You only have to watch your Twitter streams to see it happening in real time everyday.

So no… I do not think social network sites are hurting the news industry. Maybe it is hurting the small time news that might want to look toward having their own handle to keep or attract more readers/ viewers.

Do you feel social networking sites might be hurting the news industry?