Affordable website design means more than just a cheap designer. Someone who charges less, doesn’t always cost less.

Your time costs money too! If you’re hiring someone to design your website from scratch, or just redesign your existing one, think about the time that it will take to work with someone to get it done. Many so called “affordable” designers lack the experience to turn an approved design around in a reasonable amount of time. This is why they don’t charge much. Look for testimonials and see if others have endorsed the work of your designer. Look for communication turn around times, for which you can get an idea to this by just sending an email and seeing how long it takes for a real (not an auto-response) to your inquiry. Communication will depend on the time zone someone is in as well. If you send an email at 5:00 pm, what time is it where it’s being received? If you have to wait 8 hours before that person even wakes up, you’ll probably have to wait at least 12 hours to get a response. Then you need to respond to them, but wait… now you’re asleep On and on it goes, making a simple 10 minute conversation last 10 days instead. If you’re “affordably designed website” got done 10 days sooner could you use the money it might have made over those ten days?

Affordable can mean different things, but what it comes down to is the over all experience you have with your designer. Think about that before you commit to working with a new designer or programming employee. Employee turn over is a hidden cost that is more expensive than you think.

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I had a mildly tough time with getting my feeds sent to Google Base on a nightly schedule without doing it manually. I went through trying to use the Zend API tool, and just kept getting stuck. I then realized it was far easier to create my feed and FTP it to Google using crontab. Like anything else, if I had a problem, I’m sure someone else did as well, so I of course want to share my information.

• Step 1: Setup your feed according to Google Base specifications. Use this 5 step wizard for your feed-type.
• Step 2: Register for a Google Base account if you don’t have one already.
• Step 3: Upload and test your feed. Wait up to 24 hours for processing the feed. Then check for errors, and fix if you find any.
• Step 4: Creat an FTP account with Google by clicking “sign up” in the lower right portion of the Account Management page of Google Base. This link may work for you:
• Step 5: Create a PHP file that FTP’s your feed to Google. Code is below.
• Step 6: Create a cronjob to run that PHP file on a regular schedule. I used the following cronjob to make it run at 1:30 AM everyday.

  30 01 * * * /usr/local/bin/curl http://www.mysite.com/googfeed/ftp.php

PHP Code for FTP’ing to Google

$host = "uploads.google.com";
$ftp_user_name = "INSERT YOUR GOOGLE FTP USERNAME"; //this does not equal your Google Account username.
$ftp_user_pass = "INSERT YOUR GOOGLE FTP PASSWORD"; //again not equal to Google Account password.
$remote_file = "google-base.xml"; //Change this to match the exact name of the file you setup in Google Base as your upload file.
$file = "/usr/home/htdocs/feed/google-base.xml"; // This need to be the full path to the filey ou want to send to google.

// close the connection
ftp_close($conn_id);
}
?>

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I was going over some old articles I wrote and noticed the css drop shadow article might not have been exactly what you were looking for.  So here is some new and improved code to copy, paste, and enjoy.

<!--Must stay in place for license to use code. It's Invisible Help Me Out! --><br /> <a href="http://www.slickricky.com" style="display: none;" title="Custom Web Site Design">Free Web Site</a></p> <div style="border-right: #ebebeb 1px solid; border-bottom: #ebebeb 1px solid;"> <div style="border-right: #d7d7d7 1px solid; border-bottom: #d7d7d7 1px solid;"> <div style="border: 1px solid #eaeaea; border-right: #bdbdbd 1px solid; border-bottom: #bdbdbd 1px solid;"> <div style="margin: 10px; background: #FFE7CE;"> <h1 style="margin: 5px; padding: 0;">CSS Drop Shadow</h1> <p style="margin: 10px; padding: 0;">Some Content Goes Here.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <p>

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