Need stock photos? You may decide it’s better to pay after comparing no fee royalty free stock photographs to premium stock photo options for your web design. The same is true for brochures or other projects when you need artwork for print, as well. When choosing paid premium photos, expect higher license fees for exceptional quality work.

You may find links to over 500,000 free to use photographs in the photo directory on this site. For business use, perhaps 1 in 10 is suitable for commercial applications, yet the search can be even more time consuming when trying to find just the right shot for a given web design project. Reconsider paying if your time looking for truly free pix costs more in wasted time than the license when purchasing premium photos.

Important: Whether using free to use or premium paid stock photographs for your web design, the term royalty free does not mean free without restrictions. Respect copyright to avoid the risk of legal claims or perhaps search engine penalties. Yes, the robotic technology is here and being perfected to identify the origin of online graphics including photographs. This could mean site owners caught using photographs in violation of copyright.

Royalty free photos or other media means you do not pay recurring fees for permission to use them in your web design work. Even free to use photographs may have restrictions for other than personal use like public display or commercial work. Look for details when you shop and read the license. Some photo owners require written permission in advance or notice upon use, and some require publication of their name in credits when using their intellectual property.

Does a photo you want to use for your web design include an identifiable person? If so, you are required to obtain a model release or confirm that the site offering the royalty free photo has the release on file.

When you use royalty free stock photographs in web design or artwork for print including paid premium stock photo options, in most cases the free use is not transferrable. Just because you paid does not give you the unlimited rights to share with others including your clients, so don’t offer copies.

Depending on your budget, you can start with photos that are free to use in your web design or choose premium paid stock photograph options for extra high quality and a more favorable first impression.

While checking traffic stats today and following one referral search, we learned a website hosted on DreamHost servers had scraped 39 pages of content from the blog section of one of our websites. The response time was excellent from DreamHost in reply to the Copyright Claim and DMCA Takedown Request.

Graphics, photographs, and video were hotlinked to files on our hosting account, so the offending party added insult to injury by draining bandwidth as well as copying the xhtml code and blog text verbatim.

DreamHost autoreplied to the request in 3 minutes, and then a person emailed a reply within 2 hours to report the infringed content had been removed from their servers.

A big thank you to DreamHost for their prompt action, and to attorney Carolyn E. Wright who posted her tutorial and advice on Blackstar Rising entitled How to Send a DMCA Takedown Notice.

Fight back if you encounter copyright violations of your intellectual property, yet make sure to fully document facts as outlined in the post linked above. Keep in mind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA, is a United States law, so readers outside the USA may need a different approach to ensure compliance.

The secret to online success is still add original quality content often. You must optimize that content to attract search engines while keeping your focus on writing for your website visitors. The training materials provided with your custom cms web design give you the tools to achieve top rankings, yet the first mistake website owners make is thinking that getting Google page one will be easy.

From experience after reviewing dozens of custom cms web design project launches, 9 out of 10 site owners never add any new content. Custom cms website owners accept an initial launch with X number of pages and then neglect the dynamic potential.

As seen by search engines when left to collect dust, your stale website that never changes is unlikely to ever make top rankings.

Achieving Google page one is a goal without shortcuts. Don’t believe promises that state otherwise, especially for micro-sized small businesses who feel pressured because you cannot delegate the cms website updates.

Site owners get distracted with day to day tasks running their business, and managing their website suddenly takes a back seat. It is easy to drop site updates in favor of familiar activities that generate revenue immediately. Doing what put you in business is always more fun!

Having a CMS website is a good strategy. Letting it sit without adding fresh content is not. Need help? Contact us to learn how a budget for outsourcing site updates may be more affordable than you think.

Many owners go beyond their web design and matching blog content with a Twitter account for online business promotion without developing a brand awareness Twitter strategy. As in a custom cms web design or blog, site owners are encouraged to plan first before jumping into Twitter.

A new article by Custom CMS Design LLC owner Jim Degerstrom was published earlier today and is entitled “Danger Running Twitter on Autopilot” as featured on the Build Your Own Business article directory.

Here’s an excerpt from the article warning about automatic content feeds on Twitter:

You can tell an account holder is using a robot if their posting method is entirely API, Twitterfeed, or another RSS format. This means tweets are generated and put in queue to “drip feed” into their public timeline to show activity when in fact follower interaction is probably not being monitored.

Twitter is social media. The purpose is to socialize with your followers. The moment you choose efficiency over being personal, you dilute the value of being on Twitter. When people reply to an automated tweet or ask a question they won’t get an answer until a real person checks for replies.

Trust our team when it comes to advice about custom cms web design, blog design, search engine optimization, and Twitter strategy. View a list of Jim’s articles as a Build Your Own Business Top 25 Author out of 595 contributors, and then email us to begin discussing your brand awareness Twitter strategy.

An article written about CMS web design budget tips by owner Jim Degerstrom was published on EzineArticles.com earlier this month to help you evaluate designers and plan a new cms web design project.

As a side note, the EzineArticles platinum author mug shown at the left was a premium gift awarded to select authors by the EzineArticles directory owners in 2007 and is a collector’s item Jim uses every day. Yes, for coffee!

Website planning advice covers topics of web design budget, evaluating a designer, and future website growth. Here’s an excerpt from each of the 3 key tips:

1. Budget funds for as much quality as you can afford for the initial development and launch of your custom CMS web design.

2. Evaluate your options for a source to create the custom CMS web design based on their quality and experience.

3. Plan to add original quality content often to your new custom CMS web design to attract repeat visitors.

Follow the link to the full article entitled Custom CMS Web Design Budget to learn details about the advantages of choosing quality with an ongoing budget so your website continues to grow.

If you own or manage an older version of a WordPress driven website or blog, the team at WordPress warns you MUST upgrade to the most recent version v2.84 because of a SERIOUS security threat taking place now.

In the announcement WordPress warns readers to upgrade immediately before reading their complete post it is that serious. Consider this comment from the official WordPress post linked above about upgrading:

If you are using a WordPress version after 2.7, the nag screen on the WordPress Administration Panels will alert you to upgrade. If you are using an older version, upgrade now. Don’t know what version you are using? Without a nag screen to tell you to update, you’re using an old version. Checking the Administration Panels footer will help, but don’t waste time looking. Just update now!

For our clients who have a custom WordPress blog designed and managed by us, your blog is not affected! Rest assured your WordPress installation was already at v2.84 before this virus attack began. In addition, we use automatic dBase backups as added security to avoid any recovery problems if needed in the future.

Improve web design performance by checking website visitor statistics for trends on a daily basis. Adjust content to improve your web design by offering what people want but didn’t find on your website. In addition you may want to check site visitors by browser every few months to measure major browser competition and track the winners capturing market share.

Here’s the most recent stats check and site visitors by browser report for one of our older commercial websites. Expect the following visitor data to vary from site to site.

Totals by browser brand with all versions combined:

44.2% Firefox
41.4% Internet Explorer
06.6% Chrome
06.6% Safari
01.2% Opera
—–
100.0% Total

Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) breakdown by version:

12.00% MSIE 8.0
16.80% MSIE 7.0
12.60% MSIE 6.0

The continued decline in users for Internet Explorer 6.0 from 6 months ago is good news for web developers and website owners. IE6 web design code workarounds to meet cross-browser compatibility add cost to the price of web development. Even better news: Those stats show zero visitors using versions older than IE6.

If you don’t know about checking your site in all browsers, or your designer doesn’t care, some visitors may have a bad first impression of your website. Does your web design have a disclaimer “Best viewed in [insert browser name]” on the home page? That means it may look horrible to half your visitors.

Our advice is upgrading to the latest version of whatever brand browser you use, and testing your design to the most recent of all major brands including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

Don’t want to install 5 browsers? Visit this browser simulation online tool at browsershots.org. Their tool allows you to capture screenshots for testing all major brands including Linux, Mac, and older browsers like IE6.

Track your website visitor stats. Learn from them. Adjust content to improve site performance. However, don’t spend hours every day agonizing over short term trends. Stats tracking including site visitors by browser is a long term web design strategy.

The rules for seo do change from time to time, so search engine optimization strategy should keep up with what Google and the other major search engines consider important for seo. One example is the seo advice for how long to register a new domain. Some experts advise domain registrations for five years.

Earlier today, Custom CMS Design LLC owner Jim Degerstrom published an article on Article Rich entitled Domain Registration Term and SEO that explains the reasoning behind how many years to register a domain. Here’s an excerpt from that article:

Being aware of constant changes in Google and other major search engines for seo factors is necessary to maintain a successful website optimization strategy. Ranking well in search results depends on many factors, yet domain registration length is one where the number of years advice for seo is irrelevant.

What changed? Our advice in the past, as well as many other seo experts, was to avoid one year domain registration to help establish trust and credibility. Read the article linked above to find out why that seo strategy is no longer relevant for search engine optimization, and why we still suggest two to five year domain registrations anyway.

After converting a client’s blog from Blogger to WordPress recently an invalid xhtml blog mystery was uncovered. The blog home had 88 xhtml errors due to an invalid reference to class=msonormal in the code when validated to W3C. Two years ago the custom Blogger template and css styling that was created did not have that class defined, so how the code was inserted into the content required a closer look to solve the mystery.

While testing the WordPress blog with all posts imported from Blogger it was discovered the xhtml code errors were the result of the class=msonormal showing up in just two posts that the customer had published. The custom tutorial that was provided for creating and publishing posts in the original design was very specific about writing drafts in plain text with NotePad and using copy/paste to publish in Blogger.

The code errors were introduced in Blogger and imported into WordPress because the client wrote those two out of all their posts in MicroSoft Word. The problem with composing blog posts with word processing software like Word or WordPerfect is they create content in machine code that only looks like plain text. They may retain formats that are hidden and then show up when the post is published.

The solution to the invalid xhtml blog mystery of the class=msonormal code errors was to copy and paste the post from html view into NotePad, and then edit. In addition, the Word format inserted empty paragraphs with opening and closing p tags between paragraphs, so those and the reference to the class=msonormal were removed.

Finally, the last step was using copy/paste of the text from NotePad back into the WordPress post edit screen, and then republish. This easy solution using plain text removed the hidden formatting and the home page tested valid to W3C without any of those 88 xhtml code errors.

Learn about copywriting text content for your custom cms web design with a link to an article by owner Jim Degerstrom to help you succeed. He is an expert platinum author at Ezine Articles, the authority article directory for online advice. Here’s an introduction about seo secrets of website content and Google page one.

As one of the owners of Custom CMS Design LLC, clients for Jim’s original commercial website for custom cms web design have wondered and asked about his seo success with more than 650 web design related phrases on Google page one. More specifically they ask how much was paid to get there, plus the secrets of seo, website content, and Google page one.

First, our seo techniques use natural methods for seo or search engine optimization, and the secret to success is summarized in a favorite phrase “add original quality content often”. Each owner at Custom CMS Design LLC uses that natural seo formula to achieve Google page one with their commercial sites for custom cms web design services without paying a dime for advertising.

Here’s an excerpt from the article about website visitor behavior, and seo strategy for copywriting website content, or follow this link to view the full published seo article at EzineArticles.com that was approved and published earlier today entitled Writing Effective Content for Your Website.

Keep in mind people go online for one thing: information. Website visitors rarely will buy on the first visit. Most will visit several websites searching for the right mix of content that best answers “What’s in it for me?”. Present benefits in the introduction, and you can still use the formula of introduction, features, and benefits to enhance your skills for writing effective website content.

The strategy to add original quality content often without paying every time is the reason behind making our specialty custom cms web design services. CMS, or a content management system, allows website owners to manage site content in plain text that will publish in perfect xhtml without advanced knowledge of website code.

Quality website content is just one factor in search engine optimization. There’s a long list of proven natural seo methods used to get on Google page one. Web copywriting may not be easy for some website owners, yet skills improve with practice. Knowing good website copywriting techniques will help website performance, so return often in the future for expert seo advice and similar topics like website content and Google page one.