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What Are DocTypes and Why Do They Matter to You?

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:17:09 +0000

When you use an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver to create an HTML document, you’ll likely see a special line at the very top of your file’s source code, before the opening tag. For example:

Perhaps, though, your pages don’t have a line like this. If you’re coding HTML by hand, maybe you usually start directly with the tag. Or, maybe your HTML editor isn’t configured properly to add a line like this.

So, what is this mysterious line, why is it there, and why is it so important?

Introducing the DocType

This line is called a Document Type Definition, or DocType for short. It tells web browsers what kind of HTML your page is using.

The truth is that all HTML is not equal. There are many different flavors and versions of HTML. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard buzz about HTML5. In reality, this is just the latest revision to the standards upon which HTML is built (aka the HTML specification). Before HTML5, there was HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2, etc. In the same way, there is XHTML, a flavor of HTML that requires stricter formatting and adheres to an XML-like structure.

So, the DocType simply tells browsers exactly what version and flavor of HTML you’re using in your page.

Why Is This DocType Thingy So Important?

Just as the HTML specification has evolved over the last 20+ years, so have browsers. The Wild West days of the 90s Internet meant that every browser essentially "did its own thing" and often disregarded the official standards. Fortunately, over the last decade or so, browsers have become mostly standards-compliant – that is, they closely adhere to the the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (aka W3C, an international standards organization that devises the official standards for the HTML language).

The unfortunately reality, though, is that there are still crummy web pages on the web from the 90s, and these crummy pages were designed to run properly only on the crummy web browsers of their day. To maintain backward compatibility for these pages, browsers essentially started including at least two rendering engines – the old "quirky" engine for rendering ancient pages that don’t adhere to standards, and the new standards-compliant engine for rendering newer pages that do adhere to standards and want to take advantage of new functionality.

So, how do browsers decide which rendering engine to use? You guessed it – the DocType.

The DocType tells the browser whether it should render the page in "Quirks mode" or Standards-Compliant mode. You can now see why specifying a DocType for your pages is so important. If you don’t specify one, browsers will go retro when rendering your beautifully-crafted pages… and you’ll end up with all of the wonderful bugs and display problems of a 10- or 15-year-old browser. Oops.

That one little line can save you a lot of time and headaches. Fortunately, making sure you have one isn’t very difficult.

Adding a DocType To Your Pages

As I mentioned before, the DocType definition line should be the very first line in your HTML page. Even though there are quite a few DocTypes you can choose from, the good news is that there are usually only a couple you need to worry about. One of the most flexible and common ones is the one I showed as an example earlier, XHTML 1.0 Transitional:

If you’re creating a frameset page, you’ll want to use this definition:

Because these DocTypes are XHTML based, they require stricter formatting (e.g. closing all tags). From a best-practices standpoint it’s good to close tags to avoid confusion. However, if you’re working with older HTML and don’t want to update, a slightly more flexible doctype is the HTML4 Transitional DocType. It doesn’t require closing certain tags such as or

or :

If you want to use HTML5 features (like the or tag), you’ll need to use an HTML5 DocType – which is actually simpler than any of its predecessors. In fact, it is generally best to use an HTML5 DocType at this point for all new pages you create, since it represents the latest version of the HTML specification. This one is so simple, you can easily memorize it:

Simple, huh?

If you’re using Adobe Dreamweaver, the New Document dialog (File > New…) allows you to easily select a DocType for new pages:

Conclusion

Even though they seem rather intimidating at first, DocTypes needn’t cause consternation. Just be sure you always use one! It will save you time and headaches down the road, and proves you’re a top-notch designer/developer who really understands HTML.

Can’t get enough on this subject? You can go even deeper here.

Questions or comments? Share feedback in the comments below!

Quick Tip: Beautiful Web Typography Is Now Easy!

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:55:57 +0000

Are you still primarily using Arial, Verdana or – please not! – Comic Sans MS on your websites? Until recently, beautiful typography and the internet didn’t play nicely together. Using fancy fonts meant embedding all of your text in images, or risking incompatibility with many users. It was a royal pain!

Today, however, there’s hope. As browsers have matured, support for embedding custom typefaces in webpages has advanced. Many new online tools and services have popped up to make web fonts easily accessible to web designers. Unfortunately, though, most services are rather expensive, and most do-it-yourself tools aren’t easy to use.

In this quick tip, I want to share an option that’s both free and easy to use. Google Web Fonts is a free service offered by Google as part of their effort to help beautify and improve the web. They’re working together with the community and typography specialists to create special fonts that are 100% free for you to use on your commercial and non-commercial projects. Best of all, they handle all of the messy technical details to get them onto your webpages. Adding these special fonts to your pages is as simple as adding one line of code to your page and updating your CSS’s font-family declaration.

To get started, head over to the Google Web Fonts site and use the search tools and filters on the left to find a font you like:

You’ll note that there are options along to top to customize the preview of each font. You can view a single word (great when choosing a font for headlines), a sentence, or even a full paragraph. There are some default choices for preview text, or you can enter your own. The size is customizable as well. These options allow you to see exactly how each font would look in your page.

When you find a font you like, there are a couple of options. If you plan on using several custom fonts, you can use the Add To Collection button. For this demo, though, we will assume you’re only using one custom font. For these situations, just click the Quick Use button:

You’ll now see a page where you can choose additional options and get the needed code for your page:

First, there are options for which styles of the font you want to embed. If you plan to use e.g. bold or italic, you’ll need to choose these variations in this section. Keep in mind that every additional variation you add will increase the download size required for the fonts; a meter on the right shows you the overall impact. While it can be fun to go crazy with fancy fonts, remember that your users won’t care how beautiful a page is if it takes minutes to load! You usually won’t want to add more than a couple of custom fonts to a single page.

Next up, you can choose what character sets you need. Some fonts have options for including Cyrillic characters, extended Latin characters, etc. Your needs will depend on what language(s) you use on your site.

Finally, there’s the super-simple code to add to your page. It’s just a single line of code that goes just after the opening tag in your page. For example, here’s the code I needed in my demo:

And that’s it! You’re ready to start styling text with CSS. Some example code will be shown on the Google Web Fonts page. Here’s an example of using inline CSS to style text to use our new font, Magra:

My styled text!

Pretty easy, huh? Google Web Fonts is an easy, free way to beautify your site. Have fun, and post in the comments if you get some great results with this helpful tool.

Is It Time to Raise Your Rates? (Part III)

admin — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:19:55 +0000

In my work with small technology and web companies, I see certain problems over and over again. One of these is how to get paid fairly for work produced. In this series we’ve been looking at five common reasons why tech and web professionals don’t get paid what they’re worth. To review, the 5 reasons are:

Benign Neglect – "Everything is going smoothly. We have other issues to worry about."
Fear of Loss – "I’ll lose clients."
Misguided Strategy – "We want to be the affordable option."
Uninformed – "I’m not sure what others charge, but I know we’re competitive."
Trouble Communicating Value – "I’m not really a sales person."

Last time we looked at how to escape the trap created by fear and a misguided marketing strategy. Today, we’ll wrap up with Reasons #4 and #5.

Reason #4: Uninformed

"I don’t know what others are charging, but I’m sure we’re competitive."

At first blush, it might seem obvious that you should know what others are charging. In my experience, however, those most likely to be undercharging are not tracking what their colleagues charge for similar services. Even more surprising is their resistance to doing any research. This need not be a time-consuming project; just call people you know who use such services and ask what their provider charges. Have friends or colleagues make a call or two if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself. You’ll quickly collect a range of data that gives you a more accurate picture of what the market deems appropriate for your services. Many times, this alone will give you the confidence needed to adjust your rate. This experience is also valuable preparation for communicating value – which brings us to Reason #5.

Reason #5: Trouble Communicating Value

"I’m not really a salesperson."

There are two prongs to this discussion: existing clients and new ones. First, let’s look at existing clients.

Preserving Existing Client Relationships While Raising Rates

If your research uncovered gaps in your rate structure then it may be time to have the rate discussion with your clients. Here are some ideas to work with:

Unless you are at the top of your range, you can very likely increase by up to 10% with little or no fallout. Clients that are happy and have not had a recent increase will likely accept such a change with little fuss.
If your research points to a heftier increase to catch up with your market – say, 20-30% – then you may want to increase value provided at the same time you announce your new rates. Some things you can do that provide additional value to clients:
- Provide a regular newsletter with information that is useful to them. For web designers, that could be information on branding, skillful use of email, or other marketing strategies that help them maximize their investment in their website.
- Conduct a webinar or seminar as part of your overall service, going deeper into some topic of critical interest. For IT and tech professionals, this might be an in-depth treatment of cloud computing with solid info to help clients learn how to apply the technology to their own businesses.
One colleague in my field makes it a practice to "test" an increased rate on new clients first, to determine whether there is strong resistance. If it goes well with new clients, he rolls out the new rate to existing clients at a later time.
As a variation on the previous idea, you can notify all existing clients of the increase, but offer the option of being grandfathered at the old rate for a period of time in exchange for providing referrals to new clients.

Winning New Clients Without Selling Your Soul

Most of us have heard of the stereotypical salesman who "could sell ice to Eskimos." But a sincere and ethical sales approach still wins in the long run. Communicating value is as simple as identifying your prospective client’s needs and explaining with sincerity what you can do to solve their problem. How do you do this? Here are some simple steps to follow when making a presentation to win business:

Acknowledge that you might not be right for their needs. This takes pressure off both you and your prospect, since you’re not there to "push" anything.
Ask questions to understand their needs, being both sincere and genuinely interested.
After they’ve explained their concerns and wants, watch for the momentum to shift naturally. At this moment, you should summarize what you’ve heard to be sure you understand accurately.
If you don’t think you and the prospect are a good fit for each other, then politly explain why they might want to go a different direction and what you see as their options. On the other hand, if it still seems that it might be a good fit, then ask permission to present your services. It could be something along the lines of, "I think I understand your situation better now. Do you mind if I tell you a little about what I do?" This is both respectful to them and keeps the door open for you to bow out gracefully if there is no real interest.
Make your presentation. What should you say? Tell your story about why you do what you do, what you believe, and what you’re passionate about. Tell stories that illustrate key points and benefits, especially those that teach through "what went wrong" and "what whent right." Also, use testimonial letters from happy clients you’ve worked with – let your best clients speak for you.
Ask for a decision, using questions such as, "I think we could help you with [service or product]; do you think you could be comfortable working with us?" or, "What time table are you operating on?" or, "When would you like to move forward on this?" If you’ve done a good job of establishing rapport and listened carefully to what they’ve been saying, you should have a fairly good idea of where they are and whether to pursue the opportunity further.
Negotiate, working out the details when they seem ready to move forward. If your prospective client has indicated interest in working with you, then it’s time to talk about how you do business – i.e. rates, estimate of charges for their project, timeline, etc. Finally, if you must make a pricing concession, ask for something in return – referrals, a letter of recommendation, credit on their new website, etc. These things all provide value to you but cost the client nothing out-of-pocket.

Conclusion

Thanks for joining me in looking at the difficult (but key) issue of raising your rates as a web professional. I hope that you’ve been inspired to overcome whatever obstacles that are holding you back from charging what you’re really worth.

Do you have a story or experience to share? We’d like to hear about it. Please use the comment form below to share your thoughts!

Greg Rohler specializes in providing accounting and controller services to small technology, IT and web firms. He also acts as controller for DWUser.com.

Is It Time to Raise Your Rates? (Part II)

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:38:22 +0000

Many professionals of all kinds will be raising their rates for the new year. That’s why during this last week of 2011 we’re looking at the issue of rates for professional services and 5 reasons web and tech pros often underprice themselves. To review, the 5 reasons are:

Benign Neglect – "Everything is going smoothly. We have other issues to worry about."
Fear of Loss – "I’ll lose clients."
Misguided Strategy – "We want to be the affordable option."
Uninformed – "I’m not sure what others charge, but I know we’re competitive."
Trouble Communicating Value – "I’m not really a sales person."

Last time we looked into Reason #1 – Benign Neglect. We also started to explore Reason #2 – Fear of Loss. We’ll go into more depth on that today, and consider how it relates to Reason #3 – Misguided Strategy.

Reason #2: Fear (continued) and Reason #3: Misguided Strategy

In the last installment, we looked at how some fear may be appropriate for those who are just starting out and have a new practice. But many established web and technology professionals still have this fear holding them back, even after being in practice for some time. If not addressed, this fear can become a quicksand-like trap.

Study after study confirms what shrewd sales people have know for decades (if not centuries): people will work at least twice as hard to prevent a loss of $1,000 as they will to gain $1,000. The desire for gain is a much weaker motivation for most people.

What does this have to do with your web design or technology practice and pricing your services? Actually, everything. Many business people will continue to underprice themselves because they fear losing a client or a job. By and large, we humans are wired to protect what we have rather than to gain something new; our own emotional makeup works to undermine our potential success in business. This tendency explains why many of us put up with difficult, demanding clients and do little to change the situation.

It also explains why many web and tech professionals make attractive pricing a cornerstone of their marketing approach. This is where Reason #3 – Misguided Strategy – comes in. The unfortunate truth is that Fear of Loss and Misguided Strategy are really two sides of the same coin. Professionals who focus on preventing losses – lost jobs, lost clients, and lost sales – will also be more inclined to market their services primarily on price. They are likely to describe themselves as "reasonably priced" or "affordable."

Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Naturally, you should always strive to deliver high value to the people you do business with. It’s not only good business, but the moral high road. What I am talking about is trying to win business primarily by being a low-cost provider. It’s easier to sell this kind of message to many prospects than to sell them on your value – but in the end, it is a trap.

When you use "low cost" or "competitive pricing" as your primary marketing strategy, here are some messages your prospects and clients may hear you saying even though you don’t specifically say them:

“I’m not sold out.” That is, “I don’t have enough work to be busy.”
“I’m a commodity – my work and services are really no different from those of my myriad competitors.”
“I might be a little desperate; my rates are so low because I’m afraid to raise them.”
“If necessary, I’m willing to let you set the rules our engagement (and maybe even accept unreasonable demands).”
“I may not be at the top of my field since I’m not in high demand.”

There is a good chance that none of these things are true about you unless you’re just starting out. In the beginning, almost everyone accepts some lower paying work to develop a portfolio and gain experience. But even for this group, as much as for established professionals, the real problem is not so much one of pricing and rates as it is one of messaging. If your primary message to prospects and clients is, “I’m affordable,” then you will tend to attract clients who are mainly concerned with price, not quality. Even worse, you may imply one or more of the above messages – and that will damage your professional position in the minds of these prospects and clients.

This is a pricing treadmill. Moreover, it forces you to compete favorably with the newest, most inexperienced and unknown web designer or tech professional in your marketplace. How do you get off of this pricing treadmill?

There are several things you can do:

Establish yourself as an expert. You do this by crafting a message or presentation that gives real value to prospective clients. More on this in a moment.
Develop a specialized niche (or niches) to service. For example, if you have contacts or experience in the floral industry then perhaps you can appeal specifically to owners of flower shops. When you tout your knowledge and experience in this area, you are automatically set apart from the generic web designer. You may want to develop several of these niches with a customized message for each of them.
Attract prospects with good marketing. Nothing bolsters your confidence and negotiating power like having more work than you can easily handle.

How do you establish yourself as an expert while reaching out to prospects? Here are a few ways:

Offer to speak to business groups (ideally groups in your targeted niches). Develop several presentations. Here are some example ideas:
– How to Find and Hire the Right Web Designer
– How to Make Sure the Web Site You’re Getting is the Web Site You Wanted
– Why the Average Business Owner will Hire 3 or More Web Developers Before Getting the Right One (and Waste Thousands Doing So)
– The 5 Critical Mistakes Business Owners Make When Building a Web Site
The beauty of such an approach is that you train prospects on how to pick a web designer. When they make their selection, they will be using criteria that you meet.
Offer to write articles for small business publications in your area or target niches. Much of the foundational content will be similar to the presentations mentioned above, except you will use new stories and illustrations to drive your points home.
Develop several good stories for speaking or writing. What kind of stories?
1. What Went Wrong Stories. Share the client disaster that resulted because certain basic principles were violated (i.e. the ones you teach in your presentation).
2. Success Stories. These are essentially What Went Right Stories that illustrate how following the basic principles you teach will lead to a successful outcome.

By implementing these strategies you can attract more prospects, and these prospects will be of better quality. More importantly, you’ve changed the focus of the discussion to the value you bring to the table rather than just the pricing you offer. Especially in today’s global economy, there will always be someone willing to do the work for less than you. You want to avoid a discussion that centers on getting the job because you’re offering the lowest price. Even if you decide to make a price concession after making the case for your value, you will at least have a client who has been convinced of the value you bring – a much better position for you.

Next Time: Reasons #4 and #5

Next time, we’ll finish by looking at mistake of an uninformed pricing strategy and, lastly, communicating value without being a “sales” type.

Have comments or questions about what I’ve shared so far? Have you used these strategies effectively in your business, or made a mistake and learned the hard way? Please use the comment form below to share your thoughts!

Greg Rohler specializes in providing accounting and controller services to small technology, IT and web firms. He also acts as controller for DWUser.com.

Is It Time to Raise Your Rates? (Part I)

admin — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:08:06 +0000

I watched her mouth tighten slightly, and her voice became a little tentative as she spoke. This was clearly a difficult subject for her to talk about. The seven of us, all small business owners and professionals, were seated around a small table. We listened intently as she began to explain her problem. "I’m considering a rate increase and need some guidance," she said. This successful young counselor was asking us, her Mastermind group, whether she should raise her rates in the new year. We started asking questions and she answered. She had been practicing over 10 years and had never raised her rates. Other professionals in her area were charging 25-30% more. Her practice was respected and received many referrals. "Would a 20% increase be too much?” she asked us. The uncertainty in her voice and body language betrayed her anxiety about making this change.

As a financial advisor to small web and technology firms, I see a similar scene played out again and again as business owners wrestle with the core issue of “how much do I charge?” For perspective, consider your CPA. If she’s like most of her colleagues, she will start the new year with a new, higher rate for the beginning of a busy tax season. Many other professionals also adjust their rates at the beginning of a new year. How about you? As a web professional, have you made plans to roll out a new rate structure in January 2012?

Through years of working with small web and technology firms, I have seen 5 recurring reasons professionals in this field to fail to keep their rates at current market levels. They are:

Benign Neglect – "Everything is going smoothly. We have other issues to worry about."
Fear of Loss – "I’ll lose clients."
Misguided Strategy – "We want to be the affordable option."
Uninformed – "I’m not sure what others charge, but I know we’re competitive."
Trouble Communicating Value – "I’m not really a sales person."

During this week leading into New Years, we’ll be looking at each of these obstacles and practical ways you can overcome them. Today we’ll look at Benign Neglect (Reason #1) and touch on the first key aspect of Fear of Loss (Reason #2). In the next installment, we’ll look at how fear and misguided strategy (Reasons #2 and #3) work together to keep you from prospering in your practice. Finally, on New Years we’ll talk about specific ways to make a rate increase less painful for your clients and how to successfully implement the change by better communicating value.

Reason #1: Benign Neglect

As many budding web and technology pros become established, what typically happens is that their attention is drawn to other management issues: "How do we schedule this project?" "Should we add another person to our staff?" "Do we need to attend this conference? If so, whom do we send?" It’s these sorts of issues that start to crowd their thinking. As a result, the business side of their practice is slighted. It’s easy in this environment to forget that the prices others are charging your firm for their professional services and goods have been going up while you have been neglecting your own. I have worked with tech clients who have failed to adjust rates for as long as 10 years.

This sort of neglect might seem harmless enough, but consider some of the consequences:

As your costs increase, you have fewer resources to grow the business and improve the quality of your client experience. Over time, this puts your firm at a competitive disadvantage.
As your rates fall further behind, some of your clients may wonder if anything else in your practice is stagnant. "Do they keep current? Are they keeping up with the latest software and hardware?" Good clients will understand that staying current costs money, and that it’s an expense you need to recoup to do quality work for them.
Not having the necessary resources to invest in your people and their professional development means it becomes harder to keep the best people. Strong people often move on to better opportunities. Over a long period of time, you can be left with mediocre talent – a sort of "reverse culling" of your staff.

There is a serious problem with this kind of gradual erosion: the longer you occupy this place in the minds of your prospects, the more difficult and costly it will be to overcome it. You will tend to attract clients who only want a cheap price and place a low value on quality. If not checked, this becomes its own trap – a downward spiral.

Reason #2: Fear

If you’re new to the business and under-employed, perhaps some of your fears are based on a realistic appraisal of your value. For example, if you’re not able to turn out quality work as quickly as your colleagues then you probably will not be able to charge what they charge. If this is true for you, then your plan for the new year should be to work on improving your skills. Take a course. Build your technical library and work through it. Do some pro bono projects for worthy causes to get experience (and visibility). Do whatever it takes to increase your competency and speed. Early on in your career development, the final arbiter of your value will be the level of your productivity – how much quality work can you get done in how much time?

However, if you are established, fear is a much more complex problem that ties in with Reason #3 – Misguided Strategy. We’ll address both of these obstacles and their interrelationship in the next post.

Greg Rohler specializes in providing accounting and controller services to small technology, IT and web firms. He also acts as controller for DWUser.com.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from DWUser.com!

admin — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:28:17 +0000

We want to wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. May your holiday season be filled with delight and lead into a wonderful, prosperous 2012!

EasyRotator for WordPress Coming Soon!

admin — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:44:23 +0000

Are you using WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS? Then we have great news… EasyRotator for WordPress is coming soon!

Want to help with beta testing and get your hands on it first? Sign up for exclusive first access here.

Happy Thanksgiving: We’re Grateful For You!

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:55:22 +0000

For everyone in the US, we here at DWUser.com wish you a sincere Happy Thanksgiving! Our feelings have no geographic boundaries, though – no matter where you are, we’re grateful for the opportunity to serve you and create products that make your job easier and more fun. We’ve had a great 2011 so far, but we’re far from done – look for big things in the coming weeks!

- Greg, Nathan, Drew, Dave, James and Dana

EasyRotator Testimonial: “Would recommend it to anyone!”

admin — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:42:16 +0000

A happy user reviews EasyRotator:

I was really happy to find this extension. Just what I was looking for. Customer service is great, answered my questions quickly and were so very helpful. Easy Rotator is fairly intuitive to use – that’s a difficult thing to achieve – I am impressed and would recommend it to anyone.

– troutlily

Download EasyRotator now!

XML Flash Slideshow v4 Testimonial: Compatible with EVERYTHING!

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:31:20 +0000

Happy XML Flash Slideshow Creator v4 customer Steven G. writes:

I finally dedicated a chunk of time to get to learn the v4 software. All I can say is WOW!! And you guys made it so easy to create a slide show that is compatible with EVERYTHING. I am so grateful for your plugin!!

I don’t learn easily from reading manuals, so I have to play with it enough until the concepts and interface sinks in.

You guys rock!!! . . . Best dollars I EVER spent.

A thrilled and grateful customer,

– Steven G.

Steven expresses what most XML Flash Slideshow Creator v4 customers say about the tool – the more they know it, the more they love it!