A Blog by Web Bright Consulting

Yesterday, I added my Interior Designer client to the Google Local Business Center. Since my client provides services to customers in her geographical area, this would be a good option for local search.

The process of adding a business to the Local Business Center was very simple. It consisted of a few screens asking for business information, including required fields:

• Country
• Company/organization name
• Street address
• Main phone (additional phone numbers are optional)
• Email address
• Website
• Business Description

Other business information that are optional include business hours and method of payment. You can also add up to 10 images and 5 videos posted on YouTube. In addition, you have the option of adding custom fields. Since I wanted to highlight her photo gallery, I added it as a custom field along with its URL. Of course you can also add one or more business category.

When finished with adding the business information, you’ll need to verify it. Google has two options, either they call the business number you provided or they send a postcard within 2-3 weeks sent to the business address. Since I’m doing this on behalf of my client, who I doubt would care to hear from google, I requested to get the postcard and asked my client to let me know when she receive it. I would need to enter a PIN number to complete the verification.

So, how much does it cost to list your business with Google Local Business Center? Nothing! Nada! It’s FREE!

I can’t wait to receive this postcard from google to finish the verification and see the results on the site’s stats! Tune in for another post!

On February 26, 2008, I had the pleasure of listening and participating in an SES Webcast with Seth Godin hosted by Search Engine Strategies. I asked him this question: “Do you have a preference between LinkedIn and facebook?” and his answer was quite surprising! Seth Godin doesn’t use neither LinkedIn nor facebook. His words were “don’t use it if you don’t know how it works.” But he strongly recommends having a blog for everyone.

Since currently I hardly have time to socialize online or learn much about facebook, I’m taking Seth Godin advice: I deactivated my facebook account and I decided to focus on my blog. So please don’t send me any invitations to be your facebook friend, but you’re most welcome to subscribe to my blog and post comments.

The 7 words I can use to describe this book are: “don’t judge this book by its cover”, for if you do, you might think it is terrible! A  person’s head with a chef’s hat on top and a picture of a sundae of meatalls, is disturbing, but very smart choices for Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin. Luckily, I really wanted to register for Seth Godin’s SES Webcast on February 26, 2008 and the only way to register is to know the “last word on page 60 of Meatball Sundae”.  He’s actually practicing what he’s preaching!  

With not much marketing knowledge, I love how Seth Godin highlights the basics of “Old Marketing” and introduces the 14 trends of “New Marketing” with a lot of real life examples of big time businesses.

I expect to use a lot of my new knowledge to help my clients with their marketing strategy, and I expect to buy more of Seth Godin’s books, and I’m excited about attending the webcast on February 26.

Photo Gallery Options for Websites (pdf with summary table)

It seems like almost all professional websites can use a photo gallery for a reason or another. For example, my interior designer client wants a photo gallery to showcase photos of her projects, my children boutique client wants a photo gallery to display pictures of some of her products, my non-profit organization wants a photo gallery to show pictures of events and members to give their website a more friendly look and my city club wants a photo gallery to show pictures of their facility and dining offerings.

So, how can you create a photo gallery for a website?

There are many different options. And the best option might be different for each website depending on the requirements. For example, for the non-profit group I used Flickr while for the children boutique I used CoffeeCup.

This article provides a review of 8 different photo gallery options and gives a comparison of some of their functionalities and features. Options reviewed include: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, CoffeeCup Flash Photo Gallery, PhotoFlow, Flash Photo Gallery, SimpleViewer, Coppermine and Flickr. The article is not a how-to create the photo gallery with these tools, since the process in most cases is straightforward and is documented elsewhere.

1. Photoshop

Description: Creating a Web Photo Gallery is one of Photoshop automated tasks. You’ll need to load all the images that you like to add to one folder and specify another as the destination. Several gallery styles are available including a couple of slideshows. Photoshop will produce several HTML pages, including an HTML page for each photo as well as a thumbnail page. To add caption to each photo, you’ll need to access the corresponding HTML page and change the code.

The raw photo gallery that Photoshop produces is very basic. However, since all the images are displayed in HTML files, you can use CSS to improve the look.

Cost: $649 for Photoshop CS3

URL: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/index.html

Demo: http://funkymonkeysc.com/photogallery/Photoshop%20Photo%20Gallery%20for%20Funky%20Monkey/index.htm

Admin: No.

Albums: No.

Animation: yes, with the Slide Show styles.

Music: No.

Technical Support: Adobe (provider of Photoshop) has great product support and extensive online and offline documentations.

2. Dreamweaver

Description: Dreamweaver can automat the task of creating a photo album. For details on how to use Dreamweaver to create a Web Photo Album, see: http://webdesign.about.com/b/2007/11/27/you-have-lots-of-options-for-web-photo-albums.htm#gB3. As with Photoshop, Dreamweaver creates several HTML pages including one for each image and one for the index images, which are displayed as thumbnails in a table. As with Photoshop photo gallery, the look can be improved using CSS.

Cost: $399 for Dreamweaver CS3

URL: http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

Demo: http://funkymonkeysc.com/photogallery/Dreamweaver%20Photo%20Gallery%20for%20Funky%20Monkey/index.htm

Admin: No.

Albums: No.

Animation: No.

Music: No.

Technical Support: Adobe (provider of Dreamweaver) has great products support and extensive online and offline documentations.

3. CoffeeCup Flash Photo Gallery

Description: This is a desktop software. It’s easy to install. Has a very elegant user interface. Very intuitive to use: Did not need to read any documentation to be able to create the albums and add the photos. Took 5 minutes to download, install and start creating albums. The slideshow it creates is very elegant and easily customizable- it even allows adding background music and sound effect for the slideshow transition (five options available including: Fade In, Scroll from Top/bottom/left/Right). The software even allows uploading the album directly to a Web server. The company website is very informative and customer service is highly accessible providing phone numbers and email forms. The gallery can be uploaded as stand-alone HTML pages or can be incorporated into existing website’s pages.

Cost: $34.00. Free trial available for 21 days.

URL: http://www.coffeecup.com/photo-gallery/

Demo: http://funkymonkeysc.com/photogallery/CoffeeCup%20Flash%20Photo%20Gallery/funkymonkey.html

Admin: yes.

Albums: yes.

Animation: yes.

Music: yes.

Technical Support: Toll Free, Sales Hotline, Fax, Office Hours, Contact Form.

4. PhotoFlow by FlashLoaded

Description: This is a Flash extension (or component) that creates a photo gallery, which displays multiple images with a stack effect, perspective and reflection. The images can be flipped by clicking on a specific image in the stack, using the supplied skinnable scrollbar, or scrolling the mousewheel. Images can be added or changed directly in the Component Inspector, through ActionScript or using an external XML file.

Cost: AS2 version: $59.95. AS2 & AS3 version: $79.95. No Free Trial version.

URL: http://www.flashloaded.com/flashcomponents/photoflow/?id2=kirupa_photoflow

Demo: http://www.flashloaded.com/flashcomponents/photoflow/?id2=kirupa_photoflow

Albums: No.

Admin: No

Animation: Yes.

Music: No.

Technical Support: No contact information provided. Only “support forum” that requires registration.

5. Flash Photo Gallery (for Dreamweaver) by Alvena.

Description: Flash Photo Gallery is a Dreamweaver extension that creates a Flash photo gallery in a customizable table; you can set number of rows and columns and adjust measurements and appearance of the cells.

Cost: $24.75. No free trial version.

URL: http://www.alvena.de/ext/gridgallery.html

Demo: http://www.alvena.de/ext/gridgallery.html

Admin: No.

Albums: No.

Animation: Yes

Music: No.

Technical Support: Phone, Email, Support, and contact form.

6. SimpleViewer by Airtight

Description: SimpleViewer is a server-side PHP application that creates a Flash photo gallery. For administration features allowing adding and removing photos and customizing the gallery, you can use SimpleViewerAdmin. This option requires installing the application on the hosting server, which might require the involvement of a technical support member of the hosting service provider.

Cost: Free.

URL: http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

Demo: http://kjainteriors.com/simpleviewer/index.php

Admin: Yes using SimpleViewerAdmin http://www.redsplash.de/projects/simplevieweradmin/

Animation: Yes

Music: No

Technical Support: (for SimpleViewerAdmin): No. (Developer no longer support this tool.)

7. Coppermine

Description: Similar to SimpleViewer, Coppermine is a server-side PHP application that requires installation on the hosting server. It allows the viewer to change the theme and add comments for each photo.

Cost: Free.

URL: http://coppermine-gallery.net/

Demo: http://coppermine-gallery.net/

Admin: Yes.

Albums: Yes.

Animation: Yes.

Music: No.

Technical Support: No contact information. Support Forum with registration.

8. Flicker

Description: Flicker is a photo publishing and sharing tool provided by Yahoo!. It is a good option for non-profit groups and organizations as well as for individual use; however, flickr’s tem of use does not permit it for commercial purposes, as such it is not a valid option for most websites. Photo galleries created using Flickr are stored and viewed on the Flickr server and cannot be integrated with website pages.

Cost: Free

URL: http://www.flickr.com

Demo: http://www.flickr.com

Admin: Yes.

Albums: Yes.

Animation: Yes.

Music: No.

Technical Support: Yes.

Check out our new Flash website at: www.webbrightconsulting.com.

Thank you to all those who contributed to this project.

YouTube features a beach house project for our Interior Designer, Katherine J. Anderson Design/Interiors. Visit her website for the link: www.kjainteriors.com.

This is another exciting day in the pre-launch life of Web Bright Consulting: WBC now has its own live Blog on WordPress.

Make sure you visit this blog on regular basis to learn about our milestones. We expect an exciting journey ahead and we like you to be part of it!

I’ve been working on a business plan for my business since the beginning of this year; and even though my ideas have been crystallizing, I could not think of any business name! I finally went to the sea world and looked at sailing boats for inspiration (I love water and sailing boats). Here is the list I came up with:

1. Genuine Web Solutions
2. Red Cardinals Consulting
3. Blue Voyage Consulting
4. Web Bright Consulting
5. Webamaran Solutions
6. Hobie Cat* Consulting

(* Hobie Cat “is one of several small catamarans. Compared to other small sailboats, Hobie Cats are appealing because they offer high performance at a relatively low cost. “Wikipedia” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobie_Cat)After my friends and family voted on these names in this mini poll, I decided on Web Bright Consulting.

So thank you for all those who participated in the poll.. you helped this promising young adventure make history!