This information is for anyone who uses and/or makes buttons and banners for advertising in particular.

*It is important, considerate, to take into account the standard sizes when offering advertising space, or button-making services.*

Here is a site that gives the standard sizes in advertising images (not listed, but VERY standard is the 120×60) http://www.bannercreator.nu/banner-size.html - For those that need cheap, there is also a free button creator on this site.

The most common size buttons you will come across particularly working with other wahms, or similar:
88×31 - this is a micro button and very small, but some sites like to use them.
120×60 - this is a very standard size - take a look at what mothering.comcharges for a month for this size!)
125×125 - just a square button
234×60 - this is a half-banner, used, but not that much.
468×60 - this is a standard banner size.

The other sizes you come across are: the letterhead, which spans the width of the site 728 x 90; and skyscrapers that typically come in 120×600 or 160×600. There are other sizes that are used, but they are not as common among the work at home communities.

New to all of this? While you are surfing around and you are curious what size something it, right click on it and choose properties from the menu.. there it will tell you the size in pixels. (what’s a pixel? One little dot on your computer screen is a pixel - so you screen is made up of milllions of them!). Nothing come up when you right-click? Keep surfing, on to another site to check it out (it probably has “no right-click” enabled - that is another topic).

One last thing to mention. If you are making advertising images, or need them made, consider the look and feel of the image… the whole reason you are advertising is to get visitors to your site - successful business is dependant on traffic! If your image doesn’t have appeal, you won’t lure visitors to your site. Your image needs to stand up and out and say “HEY, LOOK at me!”

Here’s an example:
This banner is just a quickie I threw together.. I had no “inspiration”, just needed it quick. It was suitable, but didn’t Speak to anyone:
http://www.mommamuse.com/wp-admin/www.momslittlegarden.com/images/banner/mlg-purp-banner-1205.gif

Then, I made this one (hey, I’m not claiming to be a graphic artist, far from it! ha!!). However, I know that in comparison to the other one, this
one does reach out:
www.momslittlegarden.com/images/banner/mlg-animated-banner.gif

Hey… been looking at sites today.

I bet you know that .gif or .jpg formating is what we use for images on the web.. but do you know why you use each one?

Very simply.. .jpg is used for pictures (or scanned drawings), .gif is used for wording (fonts, straight lines) - notice, if you have images of words and saved them as .jpg, you’ll see they are blurry around the edges. Instead, save those as a .gif and you save your
nice sharp, clean lines.

.jpg for busy pictures (lots of color and shades, allows for blending)
.gif for wording (keep those lines clean)

I was reminded that .gif is also used for animations.

Did you know that search engines view these as two different sites?
http://www.mysite.com
http://mysite.com

You may eventually even be penalized for “duplicate content”.

- Make sure all the links within your site are done one way OR the other.
- When you submit your site for a link exchange, make sure you use the same one consistently.
- Make sure all your profiles, signatures and any other place you leave your mark is consistent also.

If you can get into your htaccess file, point your files to look at your site one way or the other. Sometimes a simple redirect will work. For others, a mod Rewrite is necessary.

Back up your files before you make any changes. Nothing like goofing something up and not knowing how to fix it!

Don’t know how to do it? Ask your web designer for help. If they don’t know, but know enough to design sites, they should easily be able to find
the information and help you fix it. This may not be part of their regular fee, though they should know html and how your pages are put together.

To cover my own tush, this is information I only recently learned. I thought it something worth passing along. If you are concerned about your
own site, definitely do some research to decide if this is something you need to change.

In answer to the question, what is the penalty?
Google penalized a concrete number, but according to this blog entry, specifics aren’t given:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001392.html

I googled the term “duplicate content penalized”
http://www.duplicatecheck.com/

Or “What is duplicate content”
http://www.elixirsystems.com/seo_tips/avoiding-duplicate-content-penalty.php

If this doesn’t help try google’ing (or using your personal favorite search engine) and I’m sure you’ll find something that explains what it is, how long of a penalty you may recieve, how to tell if you have duplicate content and what to do about it.

In all the technology issues I have endured with my Toshiba laptop, I’ve finally moved past Microsoft and on to web based programs. Some changes were already there, but some were reluctant changes for me. Having done it all, finally, I’m thrilled! I am able to access everything from any computer. I didn’t want alternatives to Outlook… now I’m glad I found some!

Yesterday, Friday, I called Steve from Toshiba level 3 tech support. It was no surprise, but the number he gave me sent me right to voice mail. So much for that. I left him 2 messages anyway. Even though Steve assured me on Thursday he’d talk to James that day and get back with me, I never did hear from him. No return call in response to my 2 voice messages either.

I’ve been on the phone with Toshiba 3 times today.