CyberMummy - CyberLabs: Site Design

Hi Everyone, this post was written in real time and has now been edited so my lack of grammar, the spelling mistakes and all the other things that I do that are generally rubbish, have been corrected and the post generally tidied up! Thanks for bearing with me!

Yusuf Hoosain from Glam Media is a designer, normally working busily on making things look good and so he knows what works and what doesn't. He has done a lot of the hard work in the past, so that we don't have to now.

Yusuf on Stage during his presentation

What makes a good website? was the rhetorical question that Yusuf started with. He broke it down in to sections so that even those of us with no design background could understand how to improve our virtual home.

Good design differentiates your space from everyone else. It will strengthen your presence and help advertisers and people come back, and that is what we are after. It doesn't have to be professionally done, but keeping some simple rules will mean that we can all have a design that we are happy with.

Of course a good design doesn't mean that you don't need good content. Keeping things fresh, appealing and exciting means people come back to your blog and you will enjoy what you do all the more!

Just as a Mothers work is never done, your blog is never complete either. There needs to be continual development, it will be something you learn as you go along, changes with fashion, your own tastes and within the industry.

What is important is that you keep it fresh and relevant, but keep it simple like Google.

What is important for anyone is that you should know your audience, if you know who this is then ask them what they feel about your design, about changes, about how they get around your site and you will know what you need to improve based on what they say.

One thing that Yusuf was very adamant about from his own personal experience is that blogs need to be user friendly. How many times have you clicked on to a post that looked interesting and maybe even followed a few links inside the blog only to end up lost? Web usability needs to be a high priority, nobody wants to have to go on a course to work out how to get back to the main page.

The logo header is important, it is the first thing people see when they come to your site.  Some people have large headers that take a while to download and if you are one of these people be warned that some people might not stay, for the image to be downloaded. It is in the first 1000 pixels is where your relevant blog posts should be, so keep your header neat and a proportional size!
Headers are about branding and standing out from the millions of other sites. Think for sites that you like and you will see that the sites that stick out are the ones where you remember the header. This is because the
header and logo are your brand. It might be that you need to focus on it with a professional, but it is a big part of blogging these days.

Navigational systems (such as the one on my blog at the top there) are great as you need to know how to get back to the start of the blog from any page. Use categories for picture galleries, vlogs, keep it simple and clean and it will be easy to use.

Nobody likes a big wall of text, use logical blocks, use headlines, sub headlines, and paragraphs to help users be drawn into your content. Space around the text helps people to process what they are reading and what belongs to what. Colour is also important and the key to colour is contrast. Solid backgrounds with solid colours reads more easily and if you have to strain your eyes to read something, you will probably not go back.

Keep things simple, make sure that your colours stay the same, so if you have links always use the same colour to show them in your text, keep titles the same colour etc, it will give you a more professional and sleek look.

Yusuf then did something fantastic and looked at a couple of blogs, we first looked at http://www.omgip.blogspot.com/ and were told that the thumbnails of posts was fantastic (and I believe he loved the header too) as it helps people see all of the content on a blog and then even if you had gone to the blog to read about the wedding plans, you might see a post about weaning Lola and end up reading that as well.

After the end of the session I was able to grab a few moments with Yusuf and along with Karin at http://www.cafebebe.co.uk/ and Emma from http://www.methemanandthebaby.com/ we were able to quiz him a little more about our own blogs. He loved Emma's header, and said Karin's colour scheme was fantastic! I was cheeky and showed him my blog and my test blog (No I am not telling you where it is!) and he did agree that something I am trying on my test blog should be put into use over here on my blog proper!

I would just like to thank Yusuf for the fantastic advice that he gave to us all, and if you need me to remember more please do send me an email, or leave a comment!

CyberMummy - CyberLabs: "You b****! What you can and can't say on your blog"

Hi Everyone, this post was written in real time and has now been edited so my lack of grammar, the spelling mistakes and all the other things that I do that are generally rubbish, have been corrected and the post generally tidied up! I have also added some info that I missed out and that Gayle very kindly added into the comments for me. Thanks everyone for bearing with me!

Gayle Trigg is a mummy blogger, Twitter-holic and a solicitor who specialises in Internet and data protection law (at commercial law firm Wragge & Co LLP none the less) gave an overview on legal and libel issues that you might find affect you and your blog!

Gayle Trigg on stage

Earlier in the day we had been told that controversial posts would bring traffic and possibly further exposure to you blog. Now controversial and personal blog posts are great, but what can you and can't you say? There are laws there to bring old world establishments in to this new world.

20,00 start a blog a day (apparently) this has benefits for us as bloggers, people sue people because they want to get damages for something that has been done, they aren't interested in getting money out of you or any other individual blogger (which is a good thing too, because I have about £2 to my name!). So if you are approached by someone and asked to remove something don't worry. They aren't going to be launching legal action, they want to protect their image.

Photos are subject to copyright. Every piece of original thought has copyright and without permission you can't copy it. This includes your blog so good news there! There are plenty of places to get photos under the creative commons license, and the images are numerous! All the images used in Gayle's talk had been sourced from places that had images available under the creative commons license.

Music also attracts copyright, just because a video is available on a site like YouTube, it doesn't mean it is legally available. Record industry do take notice of this time to time. Take down notices are sometimes legally questionable and just because someone says to take something down, you don't have to. Take a look before you do take it down to check if you do have permission first.

Libel reform is going to be coming, in part because of the Internet and this will be a good thing.

A lot of bloggers forget that Twitter is also a place where defamatory comments can take place. Twitter is a micro blogging site, everything that you type is published; So treat Twitter as you would a blog post!

So what if you have said something on your blog that is true, but a company or person have asked you to remove the post or part of the post because they say it isn't? The first thing to check is have you said something that is true. It is up to you to prove it is.

Of course you could say something that is your own view of a fact, that is a fair comment. What you can't say it that you thought it was true. You have to make sure of your facts first, which can be problematic, but is something that we should all check before we start blogging away!

As yourself "would any fair man..come to this opinion based on those facts" and if this rings true then you should be okay with what you have written. Of course if what you are writing is in public interest then it changes things.

All comments are responsible by the blog owner on the blog, but you can sometimes by saying that you are a host and don't take control of them that you aren't moderating and editing comments that you weren't aware there was an issue, but this is really for bigger companies that don't have anything to do with the comments on their site (unlike me where I read and reply to everyone!).

For most blogs, the standard rule of prevention is better than cure stands true. You are better off reserving the right to reject comments or edit them if you consider them inappropriate, in order to avoid the issue arising in the first place (Which I totally do!).

Do take things seriously if you are asked to remove something but don't think that it is the end of the world. Can you offer a right to reply, can you edit what was said? Courts don't want us to go to court, they want us to sort things happily ourselves and so would prefer that we checked for a solution first!

With regards to competitions, if it is a free give away it is fine. If you require a payment then you can't do this as it is part of the gambling act. And of course you have to be careful with all the data that you collect during the competition as this is all part of data protection. If you have peoples information from competitions you need to be careful with what you do with it and how it is handled. You need to let people know if you intend to pass it on and let them opt out from this.

And one last piece of advice; don't click send when your angry!