I decided to open up a cafepress store and begin turning my designs into products. I’m so excited.
The first thing I made was an Obama Mama bumper sticker. I’m going to look into moving some of my other designs over to products soon, as well as make more. Now when I sit down to play, I have a purpose!
It’s been a stressful week. I find designing to be a great stress reliever. This week, I tackled iGoogle. If you don’t use iGoogle as your homepage, you should really consider it! You can customize it to include just about anything you want. It’s great. You can theme your page so it’s pleasing to you instead of being stuck with whatever colors Yahoo provides or MSN chooses. Check it out, I’m sure you’ll like it. I have my Google calendar right in the middle so I can easily check it. I chose a few “green” websites and design websites to include headlines from. I love to refresh the quote gadgets I chose. Let’s not forget my horoscope!
So, I decided I wanted my iGoogle to reflect my current mood. I designed my own theme. It was much easier than I anticipated. I submitted my theme to Google, but it’ll take a few weeks to be added. I also submitted it to InThemes.com, where you can find many more themes to choose from. Check it out and let me know what you think!
This morning I finally completed something I’ve had in mind for quite awhile. Being a rather non-political person, this is quite a statement from me! Feel free to copy and use where ever you’d like, but do try to give me credit. I’d love to hear where you’re using it as well! It should make a great avatar for various forums.
Over the weekend I was playing around with some tutorials from Veerle’s Blog. I’m enjoying make desktop images for now, it’s a great way to practice different techniques, not that I ever see my desktop since I always have something open, but it’s fun anyway. Originally I had used my name, but figured that if I change that, I can share this creation with you! It is, again, 1280 x 800. Just click the thumbnail, maximze the full image. Then right-click and choose “Set as Desktop Background”. You may not use these images in any way other than a desktop background. You may not release or redistribute these images in any form or for any reason.
This morning I made two desktop images following a tutorial at PSDTuts. They are both 1280 x 800 in size. Click the thumbnail to open the full size image. Right-click and choose set as Desktop. You may not use these images in any way other than a desktop background. You may not release or redistribute these images in any form or for any reason.
Fonts are fun! They can add a certain element to a page that pulls it all together. When creating images, you are free to use any font you want, but for the text of a webpage you need to stick with a browser safe font.
Your computer came with pre-installed TrueType fonts otherwise known as browser safe fonts. These fonts differ slightly for Mac and Windows. It’s always best to specify fonts for both formats. Consulting a list of browser safe fonts when deciding on the look of your site can be very helpful.
Don’t give up those fun, scripty and unusual fonts! Just keep them in the images and you’ll have a wonderful webpage, displayed properly everytime.
When you take over managing your own website, it’s inevitable, you’re going to want to make changes. That’s great. Learning to maintain your site on your own is a wonderful thing. The best way to learn html is to dig right in. Before you do anything at all, back up your site!
You should always do a back up before you start making changes. Then when you’re happy, you should do another back up. It’s a good idea to have a local copy of your website just in case. You never know when something might happen to the server and even though your hosting provider should have a back up, having your own is good as well.
You’ll want to log into Cpanel and click on, you guessed, “backup”. You’ll see the words “Download a home directory Backup”. Click those words and you’ll be downloading a zip file containing all the files on your website. You’ll also want to grab a copy of your database if your site uses one. Beneath the link you just clicked, you’ll see the words “Download a MySQL Database Backup”. Under that will be a list of each of your databases. You’ll need to click each individual database to download a copy of it.
In the right hand column, you see places where you can restore a back up. Should something happen and you need to roll back your site, just come here, choose the right box (site, database), browse to the place on your computer where you stored the file and upload it. You just saved your website!
Go right now and back up your website!!
Welcome to Steph’s tips, freebies and other web related thoughts. I hope you’ll find useful information, tips or other great things. I plan to release a few free templates and some graphics - I’ve been working on desktop backgrounds. If I find a useful online service to help you with your website, I’ll be sure to share it. If you’re looking for something in particular, let me know and I’ll see what I can find. If you find something wonderful, you are welcome to share it here!
