Submit Text Copy For Your Web Site
The heart of any web site is the textual content. Reading these content submission tips and guidelines will save you money in designer man-hours!
Text content should be submitted in electronic format
(.txt,
.rtf,
.doc,
etc)- no faxes, scanned, or handwritten pages accepted. Coders cannot afford to make type-o's, so we are very slow typists! If you only have paper hard copy, it will save you money to have an office assistant type it.
Another Tip: If possible, edit your copy BEFORE you send it to the designer! Once converted to web code format, inserting changes becomes a much more time consuming task.
The best way is
plain text - in
Windows Notepad, MS Word saved as a
.txt file or in a plain text Email. Plain text puts no proprietary formatting in the code (the part you can't see on-page).
A web page is coded in HTML which uses an entirely different code base than a word processor. A seasoned designer will remove all the formatting you fretted over - to make it suitable for a web page.
The real problems with text formatted in a word processor come in the form of phantom characters that are invisible to both the viewer and designer, but create spaces and other problems.
They can be invisible in MS Word but show up as a "�" or "" or a "¿", etc on a website. These are usually caused by "tab stops" in MS Word, etc., and especially copy typed on a Mac.
There is no such thing as a tab in HTML - I just have to delete them.
If you compose your copy on a Mac - be sure to tell your designer so he looks closer for the
Mac
to PC character conversion anomalies. They are usually visible and easy to remove or correct.
On the other hand, the phantom tab stops can be a real pain. I once spent two hours on a search & destroy mission for one pesky character - that broke the page.
Web Design Makeover: Making Edits To Your existing Site Content - For an Upgraded Version of your Site
Submit text copy edits in electronic format
(.txt,
.rtf,
.doc, etc) - don't send faxes, scanned and / or handwritten pages - unless you agree to pay designer rates for steno work!
The golden rule is - make your edits now - don't wait until the designer has re-built the site and reformatted all the content.
Edit BEFORE you submit text copy to the designer!
If your site was quoted at a flat rate, additions and "changes of heart" occurring after construction, will void the flat fee, and add to the cost. If your project is billed on an hourly basis - it will add additional hours to the bill.
Extra fees are easily avoided if you only submit text copy as final drafts only. Wait an extra day and read it again.
As stated above - a web site uses a similar but different code format than word processors. Also,
seUP.net uses creative text formatting, breaking it up into sections, indents and sidebars to alleviate the hypnotizing effect of row after row of homogenous paragraphs.
Once formatted in this way, your edits will have to be done piecemeal - a sector at a time. This, of course will run up the cost of your project.
Designer errors are always corrected without charge. However if you have a change of heart after the site is built - it is your responsibility for time involved.
How To submit Your Logo For Placement On Your Web Site
If you had a logo created by a professional graphic designer you should be able to request a Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator
version of it.
It needs to be in a layered file - a professional designer will know what that means.
Logos usually come delivered to the client on a white background. That's a design house tradition, because they are accustomed to designing for letterhead on white paper. Web site headers rarely have a white background.
If you are making a change in the color of an existing site, you'll need a fresh, designer copy of your logo, so I can change the background of the logo image.
If you want to use your logo for cards and letterhead the .gif or .jpg image on your web site header will not do - it is too low rez.
Screen resolution (computer monitors) is 72 dpi - cards & letterhead are printed at from 300 to 600 dpi.
If you paid a professional to create a logo, you should always keep a clean designer copy - in layers - so you can use it wherever you need to.
All you need to know about layers is - they allow designers to use your logo on any background color.
