by Admin on December 24, 2010
All the time when working on websites, I have requests from clients who have a certain font they want for their website. All the time I have to respond why we can’t use that font. I wanted to expound on that a bit here.
What is a web safe font? A web safe font is a font that is commonly available on all computers.
Why does that matter? If you choose a font that is not common to all computers, then your site will not render the same on all computers. Say I choose “Curlz” as the font for my website, if the user looking at my website doesn’t have Curlz, then they will see a generic font. So the work to get the Curlz font is in vain.
If you choose a standard font such as Verdana, then you can rest assured that all computers are going to see that font in the same way.
Also, you want to make sure your text is easy to read by everyone and nothing makes someone jump from your site faster than illegible text. (Aside from music that starts automatically.)
Why can’t I just make all the text into a JPG? Well, you can. But I strongly advise against it for a number of reasons. Number one, you can’t optimize for search engines with images. Google will not read the text that you put in that JPG. So you by putting all the text into images, your site is virtually without content for the search engines to find. Another reason is that you will make your site unusable for the visually impaired, who use screen readers to read the text on the page. If your text is in an image, the screen reader can’t see it.
Which fonts are safe? Here is a link to the commonly acceptable fonts for the web.
I hope this clears the way for lots of good, readable text on the web out there!
by Admin on November 21, 2010
At Sumy Designs, we are regularly contacted and asked, what kind of site do I need? That’s a good question, because today there are many different options. As a way to answer this, I’ve created this flowchart to help clients find the correct answer.
Some sites require a lot of maintenance, so the decision needs to be made about whether you want to maintain it yourself, or if you want the site to be maintained for you. We do both types of sites and are happy to take on regular maintenance once a site has been completed. Knowing if you will have the time to dedicate to updating the site yourself is important. We find that often times people really want the flexibility to be able to update the site on their own, but then are just too busy to make those changes.
We offer two different types of websites – a custom designed site that we maintain for clients. If your site has content that won’t change frequently or you don’t want the hassle of updating it yourself, then this is the way to go.
Our other option is a WordPress content management system. This gives you the flexibility to update the site yourself easily from any computer.
What happens if I change my mind after my site is done, and I don’t have the time to update the site myself? No problem! We are happy to maintain a site in either form.
What if I chose a static site, but later decide I want to do a blog? No problem, we can add a blog to your existing site, either incorporating the current site into the CMS, or just setting up the blog as an add-on.
by Admin on November 8, 2010
Our website has needed a major overhaul for some time. The problem we run into is that we put our clients first, and we’ve been so busy with our clients websites, that we haven’t had time to do our own. It’s not a bad problem to have, but it got to the point that we were embarrassed to show people our site. Finally, we knew something had to be done, and we made it a priority.
We’re still working on it, tweaking out bugs, etc, but we’re pretty happy with how it came out.
