In this video I explain what a Facebook page is, and how to sign up. The video is quick (under 4 minutes) and straight to the point. Enjoy!

The transcription of the video is below.

Hey everyone, it’s Shawn from Graticle Design. Today, I wanted to go over with you how to sign up for a Facebook page. In case you don’t already know how to. It’s actually different than what you’d see here where it says sign up its free, anyone can join. That’s actually a personal page. You want to click the Create a page for a celebrity, banner, or business — reason being it’s against Facebook guidelines otherwise, and they don’t want you to sign up for a business through a personal account because they don’t want you spamming everyone. So they give you the option to get a Facebook Page which is actually beneficial to you. This is because with a personal page you have a cap on a your friend’s list of five thousand people. On the other hand, for business having a personal page, you can have as many friends you’d like. And if you do go ahead and use a personal account for your business and Facebook finds out about it later, all of the work and reputation you built up during that time period is all gone. You will have to start completely over.

So let’s go ahead and create a page for your business. You have a couple options, we’re to go to local businesses, in particular, automotive. Go ahead and pick your category here. And enter the business name here, I am going to type in Bob’s Automotive. I don’t know in this business and I’m going to delete this right after I’m finished. Enter in the captcha and if you are authorized to do so, type your name there. So click Create A Page. If you do not already have a Facebook account this is where they are going to want you to create one. You can create one and if you don’t want a personal account created, you can go to Settings or Google it to learn how to make your profile completely private so no one can ever find it. I do recommend just creating one and networking with your friends and you’d be surprised that a lot of friends are already on there.

You are now going to be faced with a blank page, and this is where you get to edit everything. It’s really self explanatory as the entire Facebook website is. You can edit things such as your website, company overview, mission statement, when you opened, and features.

Thank you.

Do you have any comments or suggestions? If so, leave a comment below!

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1. What is Twitter and How to Sign Up
2. How To Autoplay Your Youtube Video
3. Twitter Tips

This tutorial is going to show you how to place a YouTube video on your own website or blog, and also how to make it automatically play when your site loads. The reason you might want to auto play a video on your website are for various reasons. One being, the number of your YouTube plays on YouTube will increase, giving you a better position. Rather than waiting for someone to play your video online, you have a view every time someone visits your website.

So for the first step is finding the YouTube video that you are looking for.

Once, you know this you need to copy and paste the Embeded code given to you shown in the screenshot below.

YouTube Embeded Code

When you first copy and paste your code to your website, this is the code that you are given.

 <object width="425" height="344">

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-5ftmBBhssY&hl=en&fs=1&"></param>

<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>

<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-5ftmBBhssY&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>

</object> 

Notice in the code above I have highlighted the everything in the embed tags. This is the code that you are going to keep in order to auto play your video. You can go ahead and delete the rest.

The next step after you have cleaned up the code, is to add &autoplay=1 to the end of the embed source url (embed src) as shown below.

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-5ftmBBhssY&hl=en&fs=1&autoplay=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>

</object> 

Not as bad as you thought I’m sure.  Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Related posts:

1. What is Twitter and How to Sign Up
2. How To Sign Up For A Facebook Fan Page

Lately, we have had a lot of clients that have been curious on how to sign up with Twitter and start using it. So we decided to make a quick beginner video to Twitter and how to start using it immediately.

So how did it go? Did we leave anything out? Leave us a comment!

Related posts:

1. How To Sign Up For A Facebook Fan Page
2. Twitter Tips
3. How To Autoplay Your Youtube Video

This beginner screen cast to Mind Mapping covers the basics of mindmapping and how it can help you brainstorm or create systems for your business. Mind mapping is a great way to think more creatively, while not thinking about structure.

You can go to Bubbl.us here.

Do you like to mind map? Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you everyone for watching our first screencast!

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I want to share with you some of my favorite tools that I use on a regular basis. These tools can help the business owner that finds themselves on the computer for a majority of their day, or even the occasional web browser looking to decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish a handful of tasks. Either way, I hope you take sometime to use them, if only once every other day. It’s great learning about programs and what they do to help with you next latest and greatest conversation, but if you use them and benefit from them, you’ll still be able to have that conversation while reaping the benefits.

1. Egg Timer

At times, we find ourselves becoming distracted from the task at hand and checking the new email, or the new comment on Facebook. This not only creates the problem of accomplishing a task, but also sends your mind in different directions, furthering you from this goal. You might look at Egg Timer as just a stop watch that does nothing more than keep time, but it’s more than that. If you use it right, it can help you become more productive. Say for instance, I need to get an hour long task finished sometime today. So comes that time, and I decide to start working on it. Now before I start, I open up Egg Timer in a new tab in the browser and set it for the time needed. By setting this timer I am allowing myself to know the amount of time taken and also helping realize I am “on the clock,” so to speak. So check it out, it’s free, and most importantly it will help you become more productive. Oh, and when the time runs out — you’ll know!

2. Jing

If you didn’t know about this already, you can capture a screen shot (or picture) of what you can see on your screen at all times, pressing the print screen button on your keyboard. While this is a great tool, what happens when you only need a portion of the screen shot, and not the entire thing? Jing allows you to highlight this portion of your screen and save it as a picture. Rather than opening up your graphics program and editing it to size, it is taken care of instantly.  While very neat in itself, it also allows you to take movies of the activity on your screen that you want to share with someone. So for instance, if you are making tutorial videos on how to use a certain program that you want to share with your colleagues (rather than resorting to showing them in person), you can capture the video and then share it with them. Although there are many programs that are similar, and it’s not a new technology by any means, Jing is by far the simplest, easiest screen capturing program I have came across.

3. Fireshot

Ok you might be saying, well I want to take a screen shot of an entire web page — something that extends farther than the viewable area. Fireshot is a Firefox add-on that allows you to do just that. When you are on a website, simply click the Fireshot button on your browser and it will give you a few options including, snap a photo of the viewable area, or the entire website. It has helped us share various websites with clients, sending them a photo of a website, rather than asking them to go there themselves.

4. Bubbl.us

If you haven’t had a chance to mind map, there is a free mind mapping ser

vice online at Bubble.us. Mind mapping can help you brainstorm and organize your thoughts into a visual format, rather than the typical roman numeral abbreviations. It’s f

ast, easy, and

helps you brainstorm without thinking about formatting your thoughts; press enter for a new category, and tab to create within the same category.

5. K7

Although I didn’t understand the potential of getting a voicemail service, it can be very beneficial (plus it doesn’t hurt being a free voicemail service). K7 gives you a free phone number that function

s as a voicemail, fax, or one or the other. They also allow you to create your own personal greeting. Having a voicemail can allow you to post your phone

number online, without the regret of receiving calls from spammers. Of course you will still receive those calls, but the number they are calling isn’t your cell phone number, and you can choose to call them back or not. And lastly, K7 allows you to check your messages on the phone, or even through email as they send the voicemail in an audio file (which you can opt out if you would like) or fax through an image. Brilliant.

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Using plug-in’s for Firefox is a necessity and a gift that the Mozilla team has given us the freedom of having. There are a lot out there, and we want to share with you our top three.

1. SEO Fox

SEO Fox is a great tool for search engine optimization specialists. It gives you quick information on a websites Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and even the age of the website you are currently viewing. The entire feature list is listed below.

Features:

• PR: (Google PageRank) an estimated measure of global link authority
• Age: age pulled from Archive.org, shows the first time a page was indexed by Archive.org’s spider. The theory is that if Archive.org found a page so did many of the major search engines.
• Links: (Yahoo! linkdomain) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a domain
• .edu Link: (Yahoo! .edu linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a domain
• .edu Page Link: (Yahoo! .edu link ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a specific page
• .gov Link: (Yahoo! .gov linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .gov links pointing at a domain
• Page Links: (Yahoo! link) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a page
• del.icio.us: number of times a URL has been bookmarked on Del.icio.us. Heavily skewed toward techy / Web 2.0 stuff.
• Technorati: an estimate of the total number of links to a site from blogs
• Alexa: rank based on website traffic . Heavily skewed toward internet marketing and webmaster related resources.
• Cached: (Google site:) shows how many pages from a site are indexed in Google
• dmoz: searches the Google Directory to count the total number of pages from a site that are listed in DMOZ, and the total number of pages listed in DMOZ that reference that URL.
• Bloglines: shows you how many people are subscribed to a particular blog via Bloglines.
• dir.yahoo.com: is a site listed in the Yahoo! Directory or not.
• WhoIs: makes it easy to look up the whois data for any site.

2. Google Global

Google Global Plugin

This plugin is a great feature for an SEO expert. It allows you to view search results on Google from other countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and Australia. This tool can open your eyes on your search results — allowing you to see how well you are optimizing your website globally.

3. Firebug

Firebug-Firefox

Firebug is a great all around tool for web programming allowing you to view code on the fly. If you would like to see a specific DIV on the style sheet and HTML, it’s as simple as clicking a button.

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Accessibility is something that is rarely taken seriously and something most business owners are unaware of. By accessibility we mean your website being displayed properly to anyone and everyone that comes across your website, including the disabled. The FAE (Functional Accessibility Evaluator) is a great online validation tool that combines the validation from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Guidelines, the United States Federal Government Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508), and the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA).

Some people would argue that it “takes too much time,” or “something they will do later” — but the fact of the matter is, your website should not ignore anyone. By creating a website that is completely accessible to anyone, you are entering into Universal Design. Last time you walked into a supermarket, did you realize the doors (most likely) opened up automatically for you? That function was originally designed to assist those in wheelchairs to enter the store more easily, while also helped anyone that was not disabled to enter the store easily too (while also reducing germs etc).

When you create a website that is accessible to the entire population, you are also enabling your website to be more search engine friendly, while also helping you become a better programmer / designer (three birds + , one stone).

Sources:

FAE (Functional Accessibility Evaluator)

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Guidelines

the United States Federal Government Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (Section 508)

Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA)

Great book for anyone wanting to expand their knowledge on Web Standards or Accessibility:

Designing With Web Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman

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1. Website Design Basics: Usability

A fairly new design that has been making its way around, is the horizontal layout. Although gaining popularity, you haven’t seen it on any of your major websites. A horizontal layout is one where you scroll through a website left to right, rather than scrolling down to read more information. The Urban Outfitters blog is a great example of this.

Once you get the hang of using the website, it’s not all that bad — it makes sense. But that’s the catch, people have to figure out how to navigate your website, and with the amount of information that we have at our finger tips, I don’t know if we have the time to learn a new way to browse a website.

The last thing you want your visitors to do is think, especially when looking for information on your website. The ultimate goal is allowing your visitors to find the information they are looking for without a battle. Once they become challenged, they may leave and never return.

One thing is for certain, once you browse a horizontal site it does feel natural. Everything we read is left to right so it makes sense. It is a step that your competitors most likely aren’t making, but then again — there might be a reason for that.

What do you think?

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I know this is an old concept to some out there, but many are still not validating their websites. Validation doesn’t exactly lend towards helping finish your client’s website in time, but it has many benefits that can help in the long run.

1. Cross Browser Compatibility

By validating your website, it gives you the confidence that it will look the same in all browsers. It’s actually simple compared to going to Browser Shots every time to see how your website looks, just to dial it in. Or even downloading a ton of browsers, and then testing them individually. My point, by validating you don’t have to do this – saving you time.

2. Search Engine Optimization

With search engine robots becoming increasingly smarter every day, it is very important to create complaint code throughout your website. Reason being, if your website confuses a robot while it’s crawling, it will see this as a beginner level website, and will lower your ranking on Google. Since the validation service will make sure you have certain attributes such as an alt tag with an image, this will also double as making your website search engine friendly, user friendly, and also able to be used by the visually impaired.

3. A Validating Conclusion

Although it might take you more time to validate than not- once you understand the validation systems, you will have taught yourself the right way to code, and therefore giving you a better understanding of back-end web design in general. It will not only help the website that you are working on become more  accessible, but will also act as a benefit to the programmer in the long run.

Validate your HTML / XHTML

Validate your CSS stylesheet

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1. Website Design Basics: Usability
2. Three Firefox Plugins for Web Developers
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Here are a few goodies that my fellow web designers will appreciate and add to their toolbox — if they haven’t already.

Creates word clouds and also doubles as a great SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tool.

Creates custom buttons.

Quickly edit text and recieve the CSS style for it.

View your website from multiple browsers in a matter of minutes.

Tons of free textures.

Great custom background generator.

An open source website tool that allows you to view your hot and cold click zones.

Web 2.0 badges generator.

Allows you to create custom 3-D boxes.

Choose your favorite loading gif.

Create great looking backgrounds.

Find popular buttons.

Quick and easy css tabs.

Create creative text wrappers.

Great color palettes.

Free fonts.

Turn your images into a favorite icon.

Helps you find an html character entity.

Generate HTML and CSS for rounded corners.

Look up Whois information.

Custom stripe backgrounds.

Great CSS grid builder.

Search and find great icons.

Making up words to help with your domain name.

Easy form creator.

Create custom menus quickly.

Upload your image and reflect it.

Lastly, TL Box features a ton of tools for web designers, programmers, and system administrators.

Enjoy!

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