Stock.XCHNG is the best free stock photo gallery that I’ve come across in my web travels.  Every image on the site is free. Most of them are usable without restriction. Below is just one example of the quality images you can find free from sxc.hu. I recommend you head over there and have a look at their images for yourself! I haven’t built a website yet that I couldn’t find a few usable images from Stock.XCHNG.

I understand that most business owners are not fully educated in the web world. Search engine optimization should almost always be the top concern for a web site in development. The purpose of a web site is most likely to sell your products or services. How many sales is your business going to get with a pretty new web site if nobody can find it? Even if your website typically attracts referral-based visitors, there is ALWAYS room to grow by expanding into the search market.

Design is important. I always make sure that my clients receive a solid, professional design, but I will not sacrifice SEO for sake of design. I’ve talked with too many people who have a website that looks great, but does nothing for them. When hiring a designer, you should make sure of these things before you worry about the “look” of your website:

• The designer knows the importance of search engine optimization. SEO should be brought up multiple times in your first meeting or conversation.
• The designer plans to code the site in standards-compliant xHTML and CSS. In addition to other benefits, standards-compliant code ensures that search engines will be able to “read” the content of your website.
• The designer knows how to use tags and content placement to improve your search engine results. Ask for specific examples of how he or she will implement SEO strategies.

Only after you have your search engine bases covered should you be thinking about the design of your new website. Design is important, but search engine optimization should be your primary concern.

In the next few days I am planning to add or finish a couple of things, time permitting:

• An AJAX contact form to replace the current one
• Modification of the custom JavaScript portfolio gallery already in place
• A brand-new comment system for my blog posts
• Fine-tuning and detail addition for some of the graphics
• Addition of archive and search result pages
• Further testing across ALL browsers

That’s it! Expect those done very soon, and a couple of blog posts this week.

Let me explain. IE6, though years outdated, remains a large issue for any serious web developer. IE6 is filled with many bugs and unexplained differences from the other modern browsers. IE6 does not follow modern web standards nearly as well as IE7 and other modern browsers such as Firefox 3 or Opera 2.4. The most frustrating aspect of any new design can be (and usually is) fixing the errors to make it work in IE6.

It is estimated that 30% of internet users still use IE6. Because of the problems with IE6, good developers end up spending a large chunk of development time ‘fixing’ problems with the old browser. It would not be in anyone’s best interest to ignore 30% of their userbase. Why is this a problem? Well, you’re paying for it. Developers must account for the extra time they will inevitably spend making your site work in IE6.

As a business owner, always make sure your shiny new website looks right in IE6. Too many developers have already begun to ignore the browser, even with it’s still-large userbase.
Hopefully, with new browsers out and more on the horizon, IE6 will go the way of the dodo. As soon as those users clinging to the old browser finally upgrade, developers everywhere will face far less frustration and business owners can save some cash on their new websites!