Last year I came across a HTML editor that’s really easy to use either for creating web pages from scratch or editing existing HTML pages, such as website templates.
I’ve been ‘playing’ with PageBreeze for a while and have been quite impressed by how easy it is to use. You can create and edit pages in the HTML or ‘normal’ (WYSIWYG) view, preview how it will look when published to the internet, easily add page title, description and keyword details and publish with FTP.
It also has a form editor which makes it easy to create forms if necessary.
Best of all … there’s a free version or a more advanced ‘cheap as chips’ version.
The basic Pagebreeze software is free for personal, not-for-profit and educational use. Or the more advanced version for business (or ‘for-profit’) use is only a one-off payment $29.95.
Free HTML Editor
If you don’t really need web development software with all the bells and whistles, it’s worth giving PageBreeze a try.
I get a lot of people asking me how they can watch online videos without them stopping and starting all the time.
First, it helps to understand why they stop and start. Depending on various factors, including your internet speed, it can take a while for videos to download. Often you’ll start to watch a video but you’re viewing it quicker than it can download.
So … simply press ‘play’, then pause and give it a minute or two (longer for very long videos) while it downloads.
Then press ‘play’ again and you should be able to watch it nice and smoothly.
Do you ever submit a support ticket, anticipating the quick reply to some issue that you’ve tried in vain to solve yourself … only to be disappointed with the reply? Perhaps they didn’t fully answer your questions or they replied with more questions?
I’ve encountered some pretty dodgy support desks, but I must admit, 99.5% of the support tickets I’ve submitted have been answered promptly, friendly and – most importantly – they’ve solved the issue.
But there are a few key pointers in HOW YOU ACTUALLY ASK FOR HELP that will assist in you getting a useful reply:
- Be as clear as possible and give all the necessary information, including relevant URLs or site names. For example, “I can’t get the HTML to work right!”, or “Keep getting error messages with my website” don’t give enough information. Although you know exactly what website or task you’re referring to, the support staff reading your message may not know. The only way they can help you is to find out precisely what the problem is.
- If you receive a specific error message or number, include this in your support request.
- When you have multiple questions, begin each question on a new line, or even leave an extra space between lines. When you have several questions one after another, all in the one paragraph, it can be difficult for the support team member to read and questions can be easily missed.
- Keeping points 1, 2 and 3 in mind, don’t ramble. Keep your request as concise as possible while giving the necessary and relevant facts. Quite often, dot points or bullet points are fine, so long as all the information is there.
- If you need to register your email address in order for the support ticket response to be sent to you, please check that you’ve entered the correct email address. Then double-check it! It’s incredibly frustrating when someone asks for help and you give it, but then the email notification that their ticket has been answered bounces back.
- Although you may be frustrated by something that’s not working the way you think it should, support staff are there to help you … not bear the brunt of your frustrations. Try to remain calm and work with the support team to resolve the issues at hand.
- Before submitting your support ticket, check that you’ve followed instructions correctly – sometimes we try to do things quickly and mis-read the instructions. (Or think it’s so simple we don’t need to read them). It’s also possible to miss the fact that there even are instructions available. Often you’ll find sites will have tutorials or ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ pages available. Remember to check for these first as you may find the answers here quicker than waiting for a support ticket response – particularly if you are looking for solutions outside of business hours.
An additional tip … remember that support desks are staffed by people, not robots. Politeness and ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’, while not essential, are usually smiled upon. It’s also nice to be able to address the reply to a specific person, so please remember to sign off with your name.
It seems that membership sites are all the rage at the moment … and rightly so. Whether they’re free or charge some sort of fee, if set up and managed well they can be an excellent way to provide online teaching or bring a group of like-minded individuals together.
If running a well-maintained membership site is something you do, or would like to do, here’s an interview that I’m sure you’ll find helpful.
This interview is with professional high-profile blogger, Chris Garrett, where he discusses the membership site advice he wishes he knew before he began building his membership sites, along with pricing strategies, software and how to use “The Bikini Concept” (you’ll have to listen to the interview to find out what this is!)
You can download or play this interview for tips on how to create a successful membership site for absolutely no cost.
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Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate
There’s no doubt about it – professional graphics can make a huge difference to your website, just as they do with print publications. But you don’t always want to go to a graphic artist every time you want a couple of general graphics to tizzy up your web page, do you?
Then again, it can be a time-consuming nuisance trawling through one website after another trying to find some free or low-cost graphics to use, then reading the license terms to ensure that you’re allowed to use those graphics for a commercial purpose.
I’m so pleased I recently found this great little resource – Copy and Paste Graphics. For only $9.97 you get literally hundreds of web graphic images including backgrounds, headers, bullets, buttons, web 2.0 images and even some animated buttons.
I really love these (can you tell?) and can’t wait to start using them. Here’s a small sample of them, just to give you an idea of what they’re like:
Do you know what words people are using to find your website? If not, I encourage you to find out.
The easiest way to do this is by using tracking software such as Google Analytics which is free and fairly easy to install on your website. If you’re using WordPress software you can simply install and activate the Google Analytics plug-in.
Then simply log into your Google Analytics account every now and then and go through the various reports.
You’ll see one that shows what keywords were used by people who visited your site. Are there lots of searches on a particular word or phrase that you hadn’t considered before? If it’s relevant to your site, perhaps it’s worth adding this to your existing keywords.
I say ‘if it’s relevant’ because you’ll no doubt find some pretty weird and wacky keywords too.
For example, the most searched for phrase that one of my sites was being found for was ‘mcdonalds victoria point’. I had directions to a meeting venue on that site and it referred to the Victoria Point McDonalds as a nearby landmark. But would it be relevant for me to focus on that as a keyword?
No. People searching on ‘mcdonalds victoria point’ would no doubt be looking for information relating to that particular McDonalds, not details about small business brain-storming sessions.
However, I also discovered that a large number of people were searching on another term that WAS relevant and so I tweaked my site a little to optimise it for that keyword too. The result? Even more traffic now finds me for that keyword – and this is targetted traffic that is interested in the information I’m offering.
If you go through the process of checking your search stats regularly you’ll no doubt have a laugh at some of the weird search terms that come up. In fact, I’d love to hear some of them. Please check your site report and leave a comment below to share the strangest search term that your site was found for.
