Hey guys,

I am SERIOUSLY busy in Faith Computing, Dirt Cheap Websites and some other stuff...

I apologise for not getting this whole site up and running before now, I wanted to make sure I had made a LOT of money through Faith Computing - which I have not yet done.

I believe with all my heart that in order to be successful in life you must have integrity, and due to my integrity I have not opened this site in the way I thought I would previously.

Whats the situation? Well it is simple, I had and HAVE a good idea here - yes, but I went about it the WRONG way! At the time when I Started J4D I was in my own office, making some money from Joomla Web Design, in fact I was boasting large invoices to my friends in the Joomla world, but business is not all about how much you invoice, it is much more then that!

My Success is meant to come from the people I have helped become successful, people like Jai Curtis of Curtis Constructions, who had an increase in sales volumes due to having a new site.

Yes, I have been successful in the past, but right now I am focused on something totally different now. I do still LOVE JOOMLA above all other web technologies, and I still DO want to make my tutorials.

The thing that is currently holding me back is that I have been on a BIG learning curb for the last couple years - learning about SEO, traffic Generation and the like, due to that learning curb I have not been making much in the way of money!

I have also been listening to people such as Zig Ziggler, Tony Robbins & Jim Rohn - for the sake of becoming a better businessman.

In saying that, I believe that I have become more of an asset to my future clients & have found that I enjoy my job more and more.

So, what is all this about anyways??

Simple - I will be opening this site up as a Social Networking place for Joomla people & Graphic Designers, I hope it is a blessing to MANY people!

Many Regards,

Scott Nailon
Sydney Australia
SKYPE: scottnailon

Well!

October... This month has been madness! In fact I feel overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do!

So far, sadly, I have not moved too far forward with my project of Joomla For Designers. In saying that I DO have a few testers going throught he website in order to check out the teaching amoung other things.

All that is really left to do is update the teaching with the "How to Edit Templates" stuff & fix a few minor issues with the Community area. I have a large group of JV sites I am working on also. (Will tell when they are ready)

Guys - if you have any suggestions or comments please email me!

Many Thanks

Scott Nailon

Free Graphic Design Tools

Ok Guys, so this isnt by LAW FREE - it is OpenSource - whih to most simple people liek myself IS FREE. The difference is that you are not allowed to resell an opensource product and make money that way, although you are allowed to use it as a tool to make money or charge for services related. A Side Note on this one - I did a lot of research and found that there are a lot of OpenSource Software Guides - this one seems best so I have added this guys content onto the site with links back to him - I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.desktop-publishing-software-review.com/

Here are some of the cool gadgets:

I have personally been using The GIMP almost from when it was first released. I have written books on it and Trained people how to use it for years. Today The GIMP is better than ever, with a huge range of free Plug ins and Scripts that make this one of the most powerful Image manipulation programs available today. You can visit my Web site The Gimp Tutorials for free Tutorials on The GIMP. A copy of The GIMP can be found by clicking at their home site.

The GIMP open source Photo editing program:

A truly comprehensive online manual can be found HERE.

You can add CMYK functionality to The GIMP by installing these three Plug ins. ICC-ColorSpace.exe Separate.exe Separate_Import.exe It is also a good idea to install the free Adobe ICC profiles: There is a Tutorial on how to install these Plug ins at my site The GIMP Tutorials - Tutorial 1 There is also a Tutorial on how to use the CMYK plug ins at The GIMP Tutorials - Tutorial 5

Download a copy of Inkscape from their homesite

Inkscape is a Vector Drawing program developed under the Open Software licence. It is a truly serious Illustration program capable of producing accurate and complex artworks. Its interface is both intuitive and well laid out. As a serious Illustration program it is arguably the easiest to use of any professional Vector program available on the market at any price.......and Inkscape is free. Inkscape can be used to create Logo's, Illustrations and finished artwork. It is a great tool for creating artwork for the Web and can output work in the SVG file format or the latest version now allows to to export your artwork in PDF . I have found that Inkscape files integrate well with other graphics programs. You can create Vector artworks in Inkscape and include them in multi page documents created in Scribus. Desktop publishing has never been more accessible to the general public and for free!what more can I say..... I love the program   You can learn the Inkscape basics with an excellent online manual. Then explore the Tutorials on my Web Site called Inkscape Tutorials..

Scribus Desktop Publishing:
Scribus is similar to In Design, it allows you to combine Vector Graphics, Photo Images and Text into documents ready for publication. You have a wide choice of layout options and the program is capable of producing anything from a Brochure to a Book.The development of Open Source Software has now reached a point where truly Professional standards can be achieved, meeting all of the requirements needed by commercial printers. Scribus will export finished files in the PDF X3 format converting images and content to CMYK and embedding Fonts and Line work to exacting industry standards.  
You can learn how to use Scribus by visiting My Web Site Scribus Tutorials.

Open Office can be downloaded from their Web Site.

Open Office is a suite of Applications released under the Open Source licence. The suite includes a Writing program, Spread Sheet, Data Base, Presentation and Vector Drawing program. It also enables you to create HTML web pages and sites in a variety of different ways. There is considerable help and tutorials built into the program. Open Office is cross compatible with the Microsoft Office products and can also create PDF files from any application in the suite.

You can download Foxit Reader from their web site.

The Foxit reader is free and is a great companion to PDFCreator. The reader is small, fast to load and very easy to use. It also has much of the functionality of Adobe Acrobat, but for free. You can add text, notes, annotation, bookmarks and much more. And for most people that's all you will need. For a little extra you can purchase the full blown Foxit editor for the fraction of the price of Acrobat.

The Essential Desktop Publishing Utilities Pack:
The programs below are the best time saving little utility programs that I have found. They are very small, fast and I don't know how I would deal without having them on my computer. Best of all they are all FREE !

Jarte Powerful, fast, fully featured Text Editor:
It allows you to open and save documents in DOC, RTF and TXT and absolutely brilliant for writing text used in Web pages. I have found its spell checker accurate and the Screen capture feature fast and simple. It also allows Hyperlinks and much more.

You can download the program from their web site.

Fotosizer super fast Image file conversion utility:
This is an extremely fast program that changes a files size, resolution or file type. You can drag and drop files into its work area. You can convert multiple files at once, even entire folders.
You can download the program from the developers Web Site.

CR8tracer very fast bitmap to Vector conversion tool:
This little gem converts .bmp files to Vector files and allows you to save them as EPS,PS files.
You can download it from the developers Site.

Gifted Motion:
Very small compact Animated Gif Tool. Open multiple image files and turn them into animated Gifs.
You can download this program from the developers Web Site.

A faboulous collection of Free Fonts at Creamundo.com. There is an Article at my Hub Pages on Installing Fonts and Modifying them.

Rod Taylor wrote the information on this page.
Please visit his huge collection of Graphic Design 'How To' information using Open Source and freeware programs at Hub Pages.

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1. Navigation purposes
A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2. Conveying your site's theme
When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors' time.

3. Site optimisation purposes
When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4. Organisation and relevance
A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organised for everyone.

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away.

Here are a few tips to keep your visitors coming back to your site.

1. Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox
When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2. Start a web log (blog)
Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3. Carry out polls or surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4. Hold puzzles, quizzes and games
Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5. Update frequently with fresh content
Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Hello,

Thank you for dropping by, my name is Scott Nailon.

This website is devoted to helping Graphic Designers find independence in their business & discover new revenue streams in order to grow with the changing landscape of our crazy world economy!

Currently, we are building and reviewing our processes in order to make sure what we show you is completely solid & give YOU the power to move forward online.

The simple idea is to show you how to impliment a Web Design area in your business, how to charge for your time & how to make money of the extras involved in this thing called WEB.

Please Pre-Register your interest now whilst we get this set up so that when we are confident with our plan we can ping you back and let you know that we have something for you!

Thank you!

Scott Nailon