A Quick Guide to Creating a Podcast - November 24th, 2006

Podcasts have become a popular method for dispersing information on just about any subject and have quickly become incorporated into the web 2.0 model. This blog is designed as a quick guide to creating your very own podcast which is not as difficult as you may think.

Firstly, you’ll need to have an equipment and software check. Apart from your computer, you’ll need a microphone to record your podcast, software to edit your recording (which is freely available over the internet) and blogging software which supports enclosures - These are explained later.

Record your podcast in a quiet environment and try to eliminate all unnecessary ambient noise. Once recorded, use your recording editor to clean it up and output the file as an mp3. There is so much recording software ranging from the free stuff bundled with windows to the top mixing packages it’s difficult to advise which software to use but if you’re unhappy with your current software, there’s plenty of free stuff on the net to choose from.
Now your podcast is created and output as an mp3 file, upload to your server and remember its location. Create a blog entry with a title, description and link to your mp3 file. If your Blog is set up for enclosures (which are methods whereby aggregation clients are informed automatically about your podcast) you’re done. If not, you can subscribe to podcasting services on the internet for a minimal subscription fee. These subscription accounts tend to have wizards which guide you through the process of uploading a podcast.

That’s not the full story as you still need to market your site to encourage people to listen to your podcast. Justdesign has helped businesses create an internet presence using tried and tested SEO methods on top of cutting edge techniques like podcasting that create an impact and bring customers back to your site time and again.

Peter Williams - Senior Programmer

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Creating Effective Website Designs - November 17th, 2006

Creating an aesthetically pleasing website design can go a long way to increasing traffic to your website. A design that’s easy on the eye is a great way of drawing people to your site and keeping them there.

You could have some of the most informative and well structured content available in your field of expertise, but if it’s presented in an unflattering way potential customers will find it difficult to follow and leave as quickly as they arrived. For example, a content-heavy site that hasn’t had the text separated in a well-organised fashion can overwhelm a viewer and they might not read any of it all.

I believe the key is to have a comfortable contrast between text and background, and not to overfill space. Another effective technique is to create faded images that suggest borders around the text. Along with well constructed text, this can subtly separate your content, making it much more palatable to people visiting your site.

Rik Weber
Web Designer

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