If you’re even the most novice of web designers you know that CSS is our bread and butter. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are what we use to apply graphics and layouts to XHTML, PHP, and .NET. I learned how to write CSS by hand however, there are some pretty amazing tools that can help you with your coding:

• SpeckyBoy.com: 50 Useful Tools for Generating CSS
• SmashingMagazine.com: 50 Useful Tools for Generating CSS
• W3Avenue.com: List of Really Useful Tools for CSS Developers

However, I must caution that you shouldn’t let a CSS tool replace your practical coding abilities. I’ve seen many a developer that was asked to custom build something when the relied too heavily on a tool for too long.

One of the coolest things about WordPress is the linking structure. Understanding the linking structure of WordPress gives you an automatic advantage over your competitor’s SEO.

For instance, this post is placed under several categories which are listed below. Search engine crawlers (bots that search your site for content) can navigate through these links in order to find relevant information and compare that to search engine criteria. Not only are the categories for each post listed under each specific post, but WordPress has a dynamic sidebar (not shown on this blog) which will update your pages, categories, Blogroll, and Tag Cloud.

Blogroll? Tag cloud? I know, I know, I was confused at first as well. The Blogroll in your sidebar is a list of links that you wish to display. Say, for instance I was an electrician, my Blogroll would consist of electrician parts suppliers, electrician resource sites, etc. These relevant links give search engine crawlers a chance to see what your site is connected to. If you are a part of an interlaced web of links (both on and off site) this will tell the crawlers that your site is a place where relevant information can be found about your industry. This is great for Search Engine Optimization.

The Tag Cloud is a little different from the Blogroll. Wikipedia has a great technical description for a Tag Cloud, but for the lamens I’ll break it down into something simpler: A Tag Cloud is a list of links (or ‘tags’) that are relevant to the data produced by your WordPress blog. For instance, my blog’s Tag Cloud would consist of ‘web design, web development, interactive design’ etc. This will also help crawlers in determining the legitimacy of your WordPress in a specific industry compared to your competition.

Lastly, the best kinds of links are the kinds of links that come from other sites in which search engine crawlers have deemed a viable source of information in a specific industry. Say for instance that my electrician blog had its links posted on the largest electrician resource center on the internet. Major search engine crawlers would say ‘Hey, this WordPress site is full of great information and other great sites think so too. He must be a really great electrician.’ If other sites have your WordPress link on their site, that is a huge step in the right direction.

I hope this helped clear up some of the clutter surrounding linking in a WordPress format and how it can help your business by having better SEO.

I can tell you that there hasn’t been a challenge greater than trying to figure out what to charge people. I really don’t like to charge by the hour for web design and development (unless it is on strict orders from the client to do so). Usually with a ‘lump-sum’ project I have the ability to name my price and put all of the pressure on me to meet the deadline.

When I’m approached by a new client, the last thing I want to do is to put all of the pressure on them to pay a huge sum for all of the hourly work that I’ve done. You can read a more in-depth article at Smashing Magazine about how we as designers can bit on projects without under-cutting ourselves or over-charging our clients.