One of my favorite holiday treats is a festive Italian-style raisin bread studded with sultanas, pistachios, and citron. I add a unique “Amesbury” touch by slathering the dough with a helping of Cider Hill Farm Apple Butter before rolling it up and placing it on the baking sheet.

The recipe produces an extremely large, round loaf, and I have found that the best way to serve this size and shape is to cut the loaf in half, and to cut each of the halves in half (resulting in four quarters). This is how “Smiley” was born. I did my usual maneuvers with the knife, and when I turned one of the quarters right-side up, its sweet face looked up at me with an expression that begged, “Please don’t eat me!”

Sorry, no can do. We held off as long as we could, but eventually Smiley met his/her maker with a kiss of Kerrygold butter and a cup of tea. A yummy reminder that you should always try to look at things from more than one perspective. They might just look back at you!

In the last four weeks we have seen a massive surge of Volusion advertising on almost every corner of the Internet. What are they selling, and why are they so zealous?

Stay tuned for our analysis of what Volusion is selling and why you probably don’t need it.

If you are a WOM client, simply click the Clients Only link (located beneath the “Contact” page link in the navigation menu). You will be brought to a welcome page where you can either submit a new service ticket, or check on the status of a previously submitted one.

We are pleased to provide this new service, and hope that it saves time and effort for our valued customers. Please note that this is the preferred way for you to reach us with site-related issues, rather than using the Contact page or sending an email. Customer service tickets will enable us to track requests more efficiently, and address them in the order in which they arrive.

Of course, if you just want to say “hello,” a phone call or email is just the ticket.

Please note that our current number (978-270-3146) has now been deactivated. If you dial this number after November 14, you will receive a recording saying that it is no longer in service. Rest assured, this doesn’t mean that WOM is no longer in business!

“The Happy Dog Directory has published two beautiful full-color publications over the past several years,” explains Rivers. “We made the decision this winter to go green with the exclusive online directory. Our ego-friendly decision will reduce paper consumption as well as costs for our advertisers. The 2011 edition can still be found at all locations listed on our website, as well as Fall and Winter local dog events.”

The new online entity features a directory of service providers in the North Shore area, searchable by category, business name, and location. Feature articles about dog care include topics about safety, travel, health care, recipes, and training. An image gallery — “Show Us Your Happy Dog” — invites readers to submit images of their pets, and a calendar provides at-a-glance information about upcoming events that involve pets.

Rivers has created a mix of online advertising opportunities that fit any budget: ads may be purchased as classified directory listings, display advertisements, or coupon offers.

PDFs do have their place. For example, let’s say you have a multiple-page registration form or job application that would be too lengthy for a standard online form. Or sales literature, instruction manuals, and other tools that need to be printed because users will be reading them in the field rather than at a computer. Both situations call for a PDF. If, on the other hand, you want to provide your readers with general information — press releases, statistics about a grant program, background about your company, etc — put the text on your web site pages so that visitors can read it right then and there.

Why is this important? Three reasons:

1. When a visitor to your site has to drill down too far to obtain information, you risk losing them. Being required to download PDFs and open them requires extra time, and momentarily (or permanently) takes readers away from your site. This can be Pretty Darn Frustrating for your visitors.

2. With all the security risks out there in cyberspace these days, most responsible computer users are wary of downloading items to their hard drives. When they click a link, they expect to be taken to a web page. If instead they see a download taking place, they feel that they’ve been slipped a fast one. Definitely not good if you’re hoping to build a trusting relationship with your visitors.

3. Search engines look for words, not images, when they comb the internet. Because a PDF is an image, all the words contained therein are being passed over. Think of the opportunities you are missing to grab new visitors!

One other tip: When you put links on your website pages, be sure to let readers know which ones lead to PDFs and which ones lead to other pages on your site. Acceptable ways of identifying PDF links include adding the PDF icon in front of the link, or simply using the words “PDF” or “Download” before or after the link name. And when possible, cluster the documents together in a list, rather than sprinkle them throughout your pages. This will avoid the “land mine” effect that detracts from your layout and distracts readers.

We’re proud to join forces with the folks who are fighting the good fight — all in the name of websites that display the way they should, without shimmy-shake, overlapping text, and other bugaboos that most viewers blame on designers rather than software.

At IE6nomore, the message is clear:

As any web developer will tell you, working with IE 6 is one of the most difficult and frustrating things they have to deal with on a daily basis, taking up a disproportionate amount of their time. Beyond that, IE 6′s support for modern web standards is very lacking, restricting what developers can create and holding the web back.

At ByeByeInternetExplorer”, the mantra is the same: paste the code, tell the world that IE6 needs to go.

As a service to our clients, we will be adding this warning code — which only appears if a visitor is using the outdated browser — to their sites. The warning pop-up window politely urges visitors to update their software, and provides links to four of the most popular and//or reliable browser applications: Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 9, and Chrome.

If you aren’t currently a Watershed Online Media client but want help with installing the code on your website, give us a call. We’re eager to help.

The typical approach for inexperienced photographers is to set up their shots with the subjects in a row — like a criminal lineup, or a picture out of a vintage Chamber of Commerce annual report — and to stand so far away that the background (usually an ugly function room, office, or hallway) dominates.

Trouble is, when you preview the photo on your computer, the smiling faces of the subjects are eclipsed by a jangle of dangling limbs — hands folded in laps, legs akimbo — and their faces look like pinheads. Awkward poses, to say the least.

On a proactive level, consider seating your subjects in comfortable clusters, or friendly poses where heads and shoulders will be dominant and relatively on the same plane, and the hands and feet are out of the shot altogether. (Tell the tall folks to sit down, and the shorter ones to stand up.) On a reactive level, make use of your photo editing cropping tool to chop out the gawky extremities and focus instead on the smiles (we do hope they’re smiling!) of your participants.

P.S. – Make sure there are no incriminating or embarrassing objects in the background. ‘Tis a hard (and costly) thing to Photoshop offensive items out of a picture that absolutely MUST go online.

And yet, as Sam Thacker, a blogger for AllBusiness.com, points out, this is what many of our troops encounter when they attempt to do a little online shopping from their posts. In a recent article, Thacker writes:

A first class letter costs the same for me to send from my home town to my son in Iraq as it does to send across the street. The Post office has army post offices (APOs) and fleet post offices (FPOs) that serve the world’s American military and diplomatic duty stations….But many E-tailers are not set up to serve our troops and they are missing out on a huge market, not to mention disappointing online shoppers. Regrettably, most e-tailers are not set up so that a service member can order a product and have it shipped to their overseas duty station.

The reason for this problem stems from the fact that most small- to medium-size shopping cart packages (many of which are subscribed to by retailers as “click-and-build” sites) do not include the proper shipping parameters that recognize APO and FPO addresses.

We are proud to note that the shopping cart package which our company represents is one of the few that allows users to configure shipping preferences for military addresses. So if you want to tap this incredibly large market base – as well as make life easier for those serving our country – contact us today and we will introduce you a whole new way of doing business online.

Managing the content of a good website is time-consuming. Adding GOOD content to a website requires commitment. It isn’t about micro-tweaking the amount of padding between an H3 and the body text. It’s about expounding upon your topic of specialization with energy and flair on a daily or weekly basis. That’s what search engines want. And that’s something we can’t give you if you want to save money by opting out of a standard web design package.

If you are ready to step up to the plate by writing, writing, writing, go for it! But when we look back on our entire body of work, we would estimate that only 5% of our clients have had the “right stuff” to make a self-managed site work to their advantage.

One of our superstars is book publicist Skye Wentworth. She asked us for a basic blog site, which we customized with some signature colors, typography, and a Twitter feed (plus some fundamental training which translates to less than 2 hours), and then she made it sing with rich content, visuals, and links that celebrate her talents and those of her clients. When you go to Skye’s site, you will never be disappointed. There is action, color, and information at every turn. Hard work? Yes. But she knew what she wanted in her site, and was prepared to populate it with exciting and meaningful content.

Another superstar is Jensi Rogers of Crafters Quarters. Her prolific postings have earned her awards from Google as one of the most sought-after sites online. What viewers don’t know is that after we showed Jensi how to input a proper hyperlink, and resize her images the proper way, she took on the mantle of handling the rest of the work herself and practically disappeared into the sunset to hunker down and get the job done. She added content to her site on a daily basis, focused on the big picture, and solicited our advice on an occasional basis. That’s what a “self-managed site” is all about. A good design firm is always there to answer questions. But a good client knows where to draw the line when it comes to how often and how many to ask.

A good design firm is always there to answer questions. But a good client knows where to draw the line when it comes to how often and how many questions to ask.

Kudos also go out to Mary MacDonald, who — after the untimely death of her mother to a neurogenerative disease — launched three websites designed to inform, comfort, and inspire caregivers who face similar challenges. Mary’s experience as a user-experience manager at Fidelity gave her a bit of an advantage when it comes to self-managed sites, and yet she embraced the reality that with limited time for hands-on work (she’s currently working on a Ph.D.), she needed to cut to the chase and collaborate with her design team rather than obsess. Mary embraced the self-managed site concept with the perfect attitude: trust your designer, but take charge of your content. This content includes not only text but podcasts that feature audio and musical broadcasts issued every week.

This all may sound tough. But it’s real. If you want a “self-managed” site, be prepared for a change from your familiar word-processing turf. Purchase the necessary tools (e.g., Photoshop or another good image-editing software package), and learn how to use them on your own time (or pay a bit extra for some training). Make lists of all the wonderful topics you want to share with your users and potential customers. And then do it. Otherwise, perhaps a self-managed site isn’t what you really wanted or needed after all.

PS – Sorry if this sounds harsh. We actually welcome clients who tell us up-front, “The last thing I want is to worry about writing content for my site.” The key here is recognizing what you have time, interest, or aptitude to handle. We can design affordable sites that bypass content (check out Dragonfly Handknits for a simple one-page site that still packs a punch). But if you ask for something else…just be careful what you ask for. You might get it.