Making a Light Tent: Trial by Error

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I’ve been busy these past few days, one of the reasons I don’t post much on this blog. What have I been doing?

Needing Photographs

In the effort of building my own product site (click to see the post about that), I realized that I needed very specific photographs for my site, far more so than I had anticipated.

I had originally thought that I would be able to get by using photos purchased from Istockphoto.com but I didn’t realize that the photos were merely depictions of generic items.

For many of my upcoming review and profile pages, I needed specific products that had been photographed: eg, Columbian Coffee Beans or Instant Coffee Powder or whatever.

It’s okay to use some of the generic pictures available, but if you want to be specific, you just can’t use generic photographs of products: there’s no way you can be sure what is being photographed.

I’m not sure of the legality of using pictures taken from places like Amazon either. Even though I’d be using the pictures to promote Amazon products, I wouldn’t be using them in EXACTLY the way they intended.

While I could use product manufacturer’s pictures without too much of a problem, I guess that part of the problem is that I can’t photograph or portray exactly what I wanted.

So enter the Light Tent

P1040615

I know it’s not exactly impressive, but I thought I needed to take a first step rather than just sit twisting in the wind! So I did.

The exact instructions are here. I followed them as best I could. But I had to make up the part about the lamps I need. I ended up using 2 x 15W white light CF bulbs in each of the smaller lamps, and a 23W white CF bulb in the top light. There’s also a lot of ambient light from the room lights.

The other part where I had to improvise was the camera: I just used what I had, my Lumix LMC-DX30 which could do small and reasonably close up shots of products. I’m not exactly sure how I will be able to take photos of beans yet. That may require some artistry on my part, esp. if I can’t get a decent close-up.

First sample photographsP1040621

When you start taking photographs, it is merely testing the waters: take a look. Any feedback would be appreciated!

This picture isn’t well cropped, but that’s because I cropped it too closely. I know that. What do you think about the sharpness? The color? The background?

I’m making it up as I go along. I do believe the next few shots will be better but the background seems troublingly gray. I’m not sure why yet. The background is why, so perhaps there’s an overcast of shadow on the back.

Having fun!

SBI: Tips on Changing Your Domain

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I’m in the midst of swapping over my site from my first domain to my new domain, and I’m very happy with how fast things have gone… Some cautionary advice, though.

If you have any serious doubts about your first domain name choice, you should DEFINITELY move earlier. I’m moving about 20 pages and it’s a real hassle. But can you imagine moving 200 pages or more?

Ok here are the tips…

1. Allow plenty of time to reset the pages, since you have to do it all manually. It’s quicker than the original setup, but will still present the occasional problem.
2. Use as few blocks as possible will speed things up no end.
3. Always make sure you have backed up all your data, including a backup of your site (as last seen on the old URL), YOUR MKL, mail, etc. as the entire domain is wiped. COMPLETELY.
4. Using the backup of your first site will help you speedily recreate the entire site.
5. If you want to redirect your old domain, then you will need an extra NameParkIt purchased so that the old domain can be pointed there.
6. If you are within the first month of your original domain setup, traffic from Google will be negligible so disruption won’t really be a problem.
7. Don’t forget to tell Google Via Webmasters Tools that your domain is now changed.
8. Don’t forget to check the links when you’re done. Sometimes links may still be pointing to the old domain.
9. If possible, do page 301 redirects (I may explore that option).

Overall, the nameparkit ($10) and domain change cost ($50) are pretty reasonable considering what needs to be done. And you get a new domain for the primary ($10 saved) and 25 new keyword searches.

Of course, if you lost any unused keyword searches, that’s pretty sad.

In the end, I figured it was all worth it as I’ll be able to snag a hyphenated and unhyphenated domain and point them to my site.

Is your site mobi ready?

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We’ve been running our new banner for a couple of weeks now, and if you look you’ll see that the URL is different for our school banner than our website. Why? It’s in Chinese!

Today’s post looks at whether your site is mobile ready, and how to do it. The mobile web is beginning the growth phase and could be even bigger a phenomenon than the current web, as the number of mobile units out in the market, many of which are mobile internet ready, is huge!

The results are pretty good, too, if you take a look.

 

nozkidz Of course, this is fortuitous because it means I can figure out if people are actually seeing the sign in our target area and visiting our site from the URL or not. But the risk is if you are on the street, and you want to check the details before you call, and your site isn’t mobile you’ll likely discourage the visitors because of what they might see.

What do they see when they get there? Well, before they would have seen a busy site in mini-view with lots of places to click, and not suited to the mobile experience at all. But I installed one plugin called Wordpress Mobile which …

WordPress Mobile Edition

A mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

This is a combination theme and browser checker that delivers a mobile view if one of the user agents matches the list of mobile browsers. With so many mobiles out there, the list of browsers is quite diverse, but the user experience is great.

Once you install the Wordpress Mobile Edition, and activate it, it’s pretty smooth. You can test your site at Ready.Mobi to see if it is compatible.

mobi-ready results

The stats are meaningless without taking a screenshot of the site in mobile view, but that’s a little tricky! Any suggestions how to get a pc to view a mobi.site? Are you a mobi developer? Do you have a mobile site? Do you have a regular site and are you getting it ready for the mobile world?