Xara Web Designer and Web Site Communicator

Greetings and good evening to all my friends and
subscribers, old and new. Steve Schneiderman here, live in
Tulsa, OK, with a variety of interesting marketing tidbits
and advice.

It's 5 pm and I really should be going home for dinner and
spending time with family, but I wanted to share a few items with
you I found of interest.

First, a few months ago I reviewed Xara Web Designer. I
explained the many features which were different from a
standard HTML web editor, and some people expressed
interest in seeing a real live site. Here's one I am
finishing up for a client:

http://www.schneiderman.net/clients/clark

The first step in creating this site was to establish the
look and feel. Originally, the client had a very different
look in mind with a logo he created himself. I convinced
the client to abandon his vision in favor of a more
professional and corporate look and feel.

Using a combination a client head shot and a blurred
royalty-free photo in the background, we created the
initial business setting and established the client with
the web site visitor. Using Killer Text 2 we rendered the
company name in gold and the slogan beneath it in a
contrasting color.

The rest of the look and feel of the site comes from Xara
Web Designer's built-in library of page and graphic element
designs. I pulled in a vertical navigation bar and added the
page names to the buttons.

Next I set the page background and borders, title color,
and body styles and fonts. I started laying the text in and
adjusted margins and font size so the text could be easily scanned.

Truth is, the site needs to be deeper, and as the client's
new business evolves we'll add more content and enhance the
navigation. The client wanted to write his own copy and we
"word-smithed" it in a few places. The client also wanted
to use some clip art to support his service description
pages.

Using the import feature, we added the client's clip art to
the pages in question, and used the repel text feature to
place the graphic where we wanted it, and to wrap the text
around it dynamically. This is a very cool feature. It's
like dragging your finger through water and watching the
ripples of text flow around the clip-art. Makes page layout
fun and cool.

We did run into a challenge with adding the form. While
Xara Web Designer does enable you to add META tags, page
names, and even embed tracking code from Google Analytics,
it does not have a built-in form designer. I contacted Xara
support and they suggested I use a third-party site to
create my form code. I know how to write form code, but I
couldn't figure out how to add the form code to the Contact Us
page.

Xara sent me a link to a support document which explained I
could draw a rectangle where I wanted the form, and then
right click to substitute and embed the form code. I didn't
believe it would work until I previewed the page and sure
enough my form appeared! This was much easier than I
thought.

Of course, I use PHP to handle my forms on my server, so I
had to do a little hand-editing of the thank you page, but
all in all, I designed the site, added the copy and
artwork, added the form and tracking code in about 4 hours
time or less.

Making client changes was very easy in Xara Web Designer. I
just opened the project, went to the page in question, and
then made the change and previewed it to make sure it was
right. When I was done, I simply exported the site, zipped
up the files, and uploaded it to my server. Worked like a
charm.

I think Xara Web Designer is definitely worth its weight in
gold, and I highly recommend it to you for rapid application
of web sites.

You can learn more about it here:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/xarawebdesigner.htm

If you want to see samples of Killer Text 2, check it out
here:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/killertext2.htm

Second thing I wanted to touch upon was Web Site Communicator.
This is a unique combination of services from another client
in Canada.

Web Site Communicator enables you to add a live video window
to your web site. People can interact with you through audio,
video or text chat without downloading any software. It has
many other neat features, and I have implemented it across
many of my web sites. Trouble is as business has picked up,
I'm rarely sitting in front of the PC these days.

Well, the folks at WSC have come up with a new feature that
is going to revolutionize social networking on FaceBook. Stop
whatever you are doing and go here right now to see how you
can add a live video window your FaceBook page for pennies
a day:

http://www.websitecommunicator.com/members/spidy/app.php

Until next time,

Steven