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Matt Cutt’s takes questions regularly and answers them on the YouTube channel for Google’s webmaster tools.

The latest question relates to how Google treats pages on a website that are not found by the serach engine after they’ve crawled your site.

What are 404 errors and do they effect my SEO?

The short answer is no, not at all.

A “404″ is a “Page not found” error. This is not terrible, Google just assumes that you are moving things around and it will return shortly (or by the next time Google crawls your site). A “410″ error means that the page is gone completely from the site and the search engine sees that it is.

While any errors on your site should be addressed, it’s not time to panic if you have these.

Creative 404 Pages

While 404 errors should be monitored and taken care of, designers know that they happen from time to time.

Here’s a list of 404 pages that we love when in the event that one lands on a link that leads to a page that doesn’t exist. You can find our 404 page here.

What Are 404 Errors And Does That Effect SEO? Matt Cutt's takes questions regularly and answers them on the YouTube channel for Google's webmaster tools.

5 Web Design Definitions You Need to Know

Understanding what someone else is saying when explaining to you about your cars problem can be confusing. I have had the experience of just having to trust the mechanic like the next guy.

The mechanic talks and explains, and I just nod politely and trust that he knows what he is doing and will get my car back better than before.

How I wish that were true 100% of the time in web.

Here I want to…

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The History Of Typography Here is a brief history of typography describing how it first came into being and evolved into what we see today with the passage of time...

#Typography

The History Of Typography Here is a brief history of typography describing how it first came into being and evolved into what we see today with the passage of time...

#Typography

3 Things Your Website is Missing

Your website is arguably the most important marketing medium available to your business today — 81% of people research online before making big purchases.

With this in mind, you can’t afford to have a mediocre website that’s a challenge for your customers to use.

If you’re website isn’t performing up to your expectations, there’s a good chance you’re missing one of the following:

- A trustworthy…

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What is Responsive Design and Why Does My Site Need it?

Most people have caught on by now about what is responsive design and that it has to do with their website being mobile device ready. However, I still get asked what responsive design is, and does Capstone Creations create responsive websites.

The answer is always yes we build websites that are responsive and mobile ready.

What is responsive design?

Here’s a infographic to explain what…

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In this post I wanted to share about how to create a landing page and show you some great examples of them from around the interwebs.

However, landing pages are often over thought and over crowded with information. More words doesn’t lead to more conversions. You want to draw attention to the product, and the call to actions (CTA’s).

I had a conversation with Capstone’s web designer, Brandon, about landing pages and how marketers and businesses will go about creating them. As web designers we’re often looked at as people that don’t know how to attract a user to a certain thing on a page and convert to a lead.

In reality the opposite is true. We know that users don’t want to think, but find what they are looking for. We strive to create experiences on websites that lend to that philosophy and help users find answers to the problems they are looking for and not waste their time with fluff that doesn’t do much but take up their precious time.

Brandon had a profound insight that landing pages should have concise copy, an image and a form. It may sound simplistic, and while I would agree there is more to it than that, the content on the page should be just that.

Every form has what you need after the user reads the copy, “The Submit button” “Get Started” and the ever reliable, “Sign Up To Learn More”

Whoa, mind… is… blown. I know, it’s a little sarcastic. It’s just that as a designer, we get asked to create beautiful things, only to clutter them with non-sense that clearly doesn’t help to convert.

Call To Actions

The call to action (CTA), as it is referred to, is designed to get the users attention and should not dominate the pages layout and design, but definitely catch attention.

The buttons text (what it says, not just it’s font size) and its tone, should also be considered to get the user to complete the form and request more information about the product you are advertising.

Here’s some great landing pages to look at to see how it’s done.

How To Create A Landing Page In this post I wanted to share about how to create a landing page and show you some great examples of them from around the interwebs.

WordPress 3.9 Release Is Here

With new features and better functionality WordPress 3.9 release is here. Named “Smithy” in honor of jazz organist Jimmy Smith.

Improved visual editing of images in the content editor are new. Also, drag and drop to upload directly into the WordPress content editor for uploading of images are just a few of the new features.

There were 267 contributors with props in this release, a new high.

WordPr…

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How To Create Strong Passwords

Picking a password that you can remember and is secure is tough given all the news about encryptions and attacks. How to create a strong passwords in the midst of these things is almost impossible without a password manager or keeping a spreadsheet, or list somewhere.

Here are some solutions if password managers like LastPass are not to your tastes.

Other popular password managers:

1Password…

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#Online Security #WordPress Security

Plugins And Plugin Add-ons

What are plugin add-ons you ask? Well I’m glad you did.

Some commercial plug-ins give you enhanced functionality that extends WordPress and the content editor of WordPress.

Often you’ll find an add-on to these plug-ins that really is another plug-in that uses the main plug-in as a parent much like child themes use a parenting and it’s functionality.

However I’m not much of a fan of these add-ons…

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#Plugin Addons #WordPress Plugins

29 Ways To Stay Creative

Being creative is what designers do, but professionally. It sounds like a simple thing, but it’s not. I’ve blogged about the rules of design before, but often, much like writers get writers block, creatives need environments and do certain things to stay creative and keep their minds fresh and open.

Here’s a cool video that shares some of those things, and might help you if you are a creative.

Way…

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#Creative Ideas #Infogr

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress Hosting is a new service that’s out on the market that gets you more service and reliability than your typical shared hosting accounts which could start anywhere from $3.95 a month to $20 a month.

The cost of managed WordPress hosting is more expensive because of less hassle of not having to worry about site updates, or downtime, that comes with shared hosting. Managing a…

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#Managed Hosting #WordPress Hosting

Does Your Website Communicate Effectively?

I had a college professor introduce a book and a concept to me that a lot of people have ideas, but not all ideas are sticky.

Telling a story is a way to pass on your legacy to another. Tribes do it, the elders teach their children stories about who they are and where they come from to ensure the existence throughout history about their people.

Good storytelling is an art that is becoming lost.

Do…

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#Effective Website Design

Why Web Development Is Not Cheap

People always want more than what’s in the box. It’s human nature, or consumerism. I laugh at the places that advertise paying a low monthly fee and getting a great website. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder with web as well.

Websites need to look good, to appear trustworthy, and perform well by getting the phone to ring and create new avenues of growth.

It’s funny how I meet people all the…

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A Beginner's Guide To Photography

A Beginner’s Guide To Photography

Photography in web has been around for a long time. Now with web trends moving toward richer content it’s more important than ever to do it right.

Often customers try to upload and add pictures themselves, the truth is that never turns out looking professional and can convey a message to their potential customers that is negative to their brand.

If you are going to dive in, here’s a beginner’s…

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#photography

WordPress 3.9 is slated for release this April. In it we are expected some great new features with widgets, previews, and uploads and galleries.

Right now WordPress 3.9 is in Beta 2 and ready to test if you are interested in downloading it. It’s of course not recommended to do this on a production (or live) site.

New WordPress 3.9 Features

Here’s a list of what we’re excited about coming in the new release. If you want to track the progress head over to http://make.wordpress.org/core/version-3-9-project-schedule/

Live Widget Previews

Live previews of widgets (like you can preview a post or page before it’s published) are new to WordPress 3.9. All of this will happen in the live preview pane on the same screen via the theme customizer.

Audio and Video Playlists

Also coming is the new ability to create audio and video playlist. This is exciting because content is king and anything that can make WordPress more aware and scalable with these types of features is huge plus. Playlists will work like the Gallery function, with a shortcode and drag and drop ordering.

TinyMCE editor updates

WordPress is based on TinyMCE editor which is another open source software. You will be able to see live gallery previews in the visual editor. The content editor has always been one of my criticisms about WordPress. It’s not a true WYSIWYG when you are adding videos and often your view of galleries and videos are a abstract one like below:

When you add a gallery to your posts, images will be displayed in a beautiful grid right inside the post editor. Another huge improvement is dropping images and content to upload directly into the edit itself. No more clicking the “Add Media” button if you don’t want to.

The Content Editor Updates

Now when added images by dropping in the content editor directly. You can now visually crop and edit them. This is huge for users that were not familiar with the scale of 100% – 50% that the media editor provided. Hooray!

Pasting from Microsoft Word workarounds in the editor will be a thing of the past as well. The editor will remove all the weird styles and stuff that Microsoft Word adds.

To say the least I’m excited about the visual editor updates. See the screenshots below for a preview of the changes coming this April.

New WordPress 3.9 Features WordPress 3.9 is slated for release this April. In it we are expected some great new features with widgets, previews, and uploads and galleries.

#WordPress 3.9 #WordPress News #WordPress Updates

What Goes Into Making A Quality Website

Often we are asked what we do for our services in making a website for people, and we can’t answer, “test, test and retest and test some more…”

Building a website is not a matter of just taking a pen and paper out and sketching out some things. It has to involve what happens after that. We have to think about what layouts actually work to convert leads.

Then we have to sit and say, “what colors…

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#Quality Web Design #Rules of Design #WordPress SEO

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