YellowWebMonkey Web Design

A free Google application that converts scanned documents to text in PDF form.

The 8 best ways you can optimize the productivity of your business website.

There are literally thousands of services, clients, and add-ons for Twitter. Here are a few useful tools to get you started- And guess what? They’re all free!

Last week, I released a blog giving a brief overview of the possibilities that QR Codes hold for business. There are a lot of ways that they can be used to benefit any small business.

The QR code is one of the latest technologies to make a splash in the business world. It’s a tool that has many positive uses for both customer and business. However, before explaining its many uses, some of you may be wondering, what in the world is a QR code?

Do you ever get tired of scouring your Facebook news feed for updates from friends or fan pages? Sometimes it can seem like you’re drowning in a sea of useless information. If you’re one of the many who scroll past several updates from people you don’t know that well, then Facebook has a fun new tool just for you.

Running a corporate Twitter account can seem like a daunting task. Have no fear, just use this guide to avoid some common Twitter faux pas.

Love it or hate it, the new Facebook timeline is here to stay. Learn how you can take full advantage of this and harness the full potential of your Facebook page as a powerful marketing tool by attending our webinar on May 22, 2012 at 1:00 PM CST.

The new timeline allows you to turn your Facebook page into a mini working site of it's own. You can now customize your page with graphics and special apps that allow you to offer contests, coupons, surveys, incentives, special deals and so much more right from your Facebook page.

Some of the topics we'll be covering in the webinar include:

• The new page format
• How to get interactivity (so you show up in the feed)
• Integration with Facebook Places
• How to make a plan for your business
• and so much more..

Would you like to learn to make Social Media work for your business or organization?  Join us for a Social Media Workshop.

One of the BIGGEST mistakes people make in a website, is not registering the domain name and the hosting in their name.  The domain name is the address for your site, for example, YellowWebMonkey.com.  The hosting is the server space where the website files are kept, kind of like your rental space on the web.

This is a step by step tutorial on setting up a new YouTube account, adjusting your profile and personal settings, uploading a video, and linking your YouTube Account with Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and Orkut.

Just about every website owner wants to get more traffic to their site. You might hire a SEO company to “optimize” your site or you might spend money on advertising, whether its pay-per-click (PPC) or other mediums. Like many others, I routinely look at my Google Analytics to see how these things affect my traffic, hoping for that upward trend line that lets me feel like my website is doing something for my business (umm, especially since my business is web design).

A little while back I saw this huge spike in traffic. From one day to the next, my traffic went up 500% and sustained at that level for two weeks. What was it that brought all these glorious new people to the land of YellowWebMonkey Web Design? It was a CraigsList ad I had posted, looking to hire some part-time data entry help to finish a backlog of projects.

That peak got me thinking, “what are some other EASY and FREE ways to get more traffic to my site?” Doing some more research, here is what I came up with:

So have you heard? The new version of Joomla is here! And if your website was launched prior to January 2012, your site is out of date and you need to upgrade to Joomla 2.5. Your current Joomla site will be supported through April 2012 however once you are past that you can expect that eventually your current site functions will no longer be completely supported by your web hosting company since they will have upgraded their software to support the new upgrade to Joomla 2.5.

The new version contains over 300 bug fixes as well as new features such as:

• Enhanced article editing
• Multilingual support, so you can have your website in different languages
• More SEO features
• CAPTCHA for improved security on web forms
• Mobile website support

Take advantage of having a professional web development company handle this critical upgrade to Joomla 2.5. Along with ZERO downtime for your existing site we fix any problems that may occur. We do a full testing of your updated site and you have the ability to review and approve the upgraded site prior to going live. We offer both basic and full upgrade services to choose from. Both of our upgrade plans include:

• Upgraded Extensions and Template
• Migration of all existing sections, categories and articles
• Migration of all menus
• Migrate content from CCK’s like K2, Flexi-Content, or Zoo (extra charge)
• Migrate directory entries from Mosets Tree, SOBI, or Zoo (extra charge)
• Backup, Cache, Firewall, and more tools

In addition our full upgrade service also includes:

• Fresh installs of all existing modules and components
• Switching existing extensions to better competitor offerings (requires client approval)
• Maintaining your Google pagerank by providing redirects for your indexed pages
• Google Analytics with automated reporting
• Search Engine and sitemap submission
• Multimedia plugin for for movies, audio and flash player
• Favicon and apple icon graphics
• RSS Feeds
• and much more.....

And if you’re considering putting off the upgrade because you are worried about the cost, consider this: If your website is hacked without these security fixes in place, you’ll have to hire us to fix it. If this happens not only will your site be down, you’ll be charged our hourly rates plus rush fees as we will need to alter our schedule to fit you in while we troubleshoot, rebuild your site and fix the security vulnerabilities. Save yourself this headache. Be proactive rather then reactive and schedule your upgrade to Joomla 2.5 now.


In addition upgrading to Joomla 2.5 also gives you the opportunity to address features and functions of your current site that can be enhanced:

As a designer one has to take a step back and understand what the TRUE intention is in the work they create. The art of design is different than that of a fine artist, in that it’s true intention is to communicate with a focused group or target audience. If you fail to create this connection with your audience, the piece of design has failed its intrinsic purpose.

Do you have a website or blog post that desperately needs more Facebook Likes, Twitter Retweets, Stumbles, etc?  Here are a few helpful suggestions...

Before venturing into branding, marketing, or social media, you need to figure out some things about your business. The whole point of all those things is to spread the word about you, but if you don’t know what word to spread, you are probably wasting time and money. Since I am a visual person, I put together a little “magnetic poetry” type action for you to play around with.