The Art Institute Online Student Community

Since most of you deal with some sort of multimedia there is bound to be a time when you will need random video clips and stock footage to use in a project. Luckily for you there is a growing archive of free video clips that you can browse for free and use however you like. Here is what they have to say about using the clips:

This collection is free and open for everyone to use.

Our goal in digitizing these movies and putting them online is to provide easy access to a rich and fascinating core collection of archival films.

By providing near-unrestricted access to these films, we hope to encourage widespread use of moving images in new contexts by people who might not have used them before.

So there you have it…absolutely free video clips and stock footage for you to use in your projects. Just visit: http://www.archive.org/details/movies and enjoy!

I had been trying to figure out how to change the text (colors and such) of posts in WordPress based on the author and saw quite a few different ways of doing it…none of which I thought were easy. I’m not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere before, because I couldn’t find it…so here is my two-step version. Yes…two steps.

Now, this is going to describe how to do it with the default theme in WordPress 2.0, but I use it with the K2 theme over at www.crystalandshane.com to make my posts blue and Crystal’s posts pink .

1. Open index.php in the /wp-content/themes/default folder and find the line that says:

   class=”entry”

   Replace it with:

   class=”< ?php the_author() ?>“

2. Open the style.css in the same folder and add styles based on the authors’ names. Here is how I use it for Shane and Crystal:

.Shane {
font-size: 1.4em;
line-height: 1.2em;
color: #393B79;
}

.Crystal {
font-size: 1.4em;
line-height: 1.2em;
color: #9C4976;
}

Just save & upload those 2 files and you now have custom CSS styles based on the author’s name!

So there you have it…a simple and quick way to have completely custom CSS based on the author of a Wordpress blog. I’m sure there are just as simple ways to do it with TextPattern, Moveable Type, etc but I have only used Wordpress. Check out the final results of the above example at www.crystalandshane.com .

You might find this little tool useful if you want to make money from your website. It’s a calculator for seeing how much money you could make from posting Text-Link-Ads on your website. All you do is type in your web address, select the category that your website targets, how many ads you are willing to place on your site, and then click on the different zones on the webpage that you will post the ads. It will then give you an estimate of how much you can make per ad and per month total.

This is a pretty neat little tool to see how much money you could make from simple advertisements on your website. Even a small amount would pay hosting fees and maybe even leave enough for a burrito!

Do any of you have any experience with Text-Link-Ads? I only use Google AdSense, so I can’t say either way about them, but I’ve seen quite a few people with their advertisements on their sites and blogs.

Many of you may have seen the Rocky Top Leather website that I created in one of my classes. It is an actual store ran by a close friend of mine, Toby Miller, that features some great deals on all sorts of leather products. One of the most popular lines is Harley Davidson sandals for women. He has a ton of sandals in stock and ready to ship. Toby is a great guy running an honest business and will take great care of you and treat you like a person rather than just an order number like many of the larger leather stores. So if you’re looking for leather products, visit his site at http://www.rockytopleather.com

Those of you that know me, trust that I would not feed you a bunch of junk to waste your time and money. So please trust me as I checked this out thoroughly before posting it. Having gone through the bachelor program of Interactive Media Design at The Art Institute Online, I felt like they left one key ingredient out of their curriculum: Marketing. Some classes may have an assignment or two that touch on it, but there just was not enough information to really create successful websites. I’ve somewhat learned on my own through the years with the help of websites, books, forums, friends, etc, but there was always a lack of one really good source of information it seemed. I came across something this week that I wish I had seen years ago. It’s called the Website Marketing Bible and was created by Michael Cheney (a wiry, British guy who knows his stuff). I’m one of the biggest skeptics in the world (especially when it comes to products online), but I have to give this guy and his products a hand…they contain a lot of killer information…if you can ignore the design of his loooooong home pages.

The best part of it is, a lot of it is free! He has seven free videos that you can watch online and all of them are worth your time if you’re serious about creating successful websites. He even has AdSense videos available if you’re into that as well!

I’m not the “know-it-all” type of guy, but I really thought I knew most of the basics for website marketing. I watched his videos, though, and walked away humbled and energized about the possibilities of what I’ve been missing out on. I’ve immediately applied some of the information he offers to the websites for my employer and have already seen an increase in traffic. This is simply something that should be included in a class at The Art Institute Online, because this is arguably some of the most valuable information for any successful website.

Here are some topics that are covered:

• Search Engine Optimization (Keywords, Content, etc)
• Reciprocal Links (The importance of having websites link to you)
• Monetizing Your Website
• Marketing Trends

As basic as those sound, they have tons of small details in each that you probably don’t know about (I didn’t). The free videos are a taste of his Website Marketing Bible that he sells for $97. That’s less than 10% of a single Art Institute Online class and it has a ton of much more useful information about marketing! Believe me…I’ve experienced both! If you’re creating any website, you really can’t afford to not watch the free videos. It’s the perfect compliment to the Interactive Media Design program…and is a perfect tool for anyone working with website marketing.

If you will ever be interviewing for a web development position, there is a great article posted over at seomoz.org that has a list of 20 questions that you may be asked. It is also useful for anyone that will be interviewing potential web developers for a project or position with a company. Some of the questions are:

• What industry sites and blogs do you read regularly?
• How comfortable are you with writing HTML entirely by hand?
• Can you write table-less XHTML? Do you validate your code?
• What are a few of your favorite development tools and why?
• What are a few sites you admire and why? (from a webdev perspective)
• What web browser do you use? (Trick question!)

All of the questions have explanations as to why they are being asked and how they should be answered. If you are planning to be on either end of a web development interview (or interactive media), this is one list definitely worth checking out! Head on over to seomoz.org to get the scoop.

Pete Freitag has put together an awesome list of cheat sheets for just about anything dealing with web development. Some of the lists are:

• CSS
• HTML
• XHTML
• Javascript
• MySQL

There are a lot more listed, so check out his site to see the list and grab the cheat sheets.

Sometimes the most difficult part of writing a paper is citing the sources properly in the end. First you have to decide whether it’s MLA or APA citations and then try and remember what format goes with which. You may have written the best essay in the world only to get docked points for incorrectly citing sources. Luckily the internet has once again come to the rescue. There are two great cites that will help you generate proper citations for both MLA and APA formats. All you have to do is put the info of your source into some form fields and it spits out the proper citation in an instant…for free!

Citation Machine provides an easy way to quickly create both MLA and APA citations. They have updated the generator and dubbed it “Son of Citation Machine” and it now includes support for multiple authors. This is my personal recommendation for MLA and APA citation generators as it is easy, accurate, and FREE!

EasyBib helps you create a bibliography in MLA format and allows you to add multiple authors, which is a plus. They have a “pro” version that provides more features and even does APA style citations. It’s only $7.99 a year, so it may be worth it to those you that have to write a lot of papers.

Both sites are great for taking the drag out creating citations. They provide both MLA and APA citation formats for citing books, magazines, movies, websites, interviews, and so much more. If you know of any others, share them in the comments below!

The new eCollege platform provides a nifty little spell check tool to use when creating posts, but many of you have said that it is weak a bit lacking. Well, fortunately there is a better tool available! Google’s toolbar available for Firefox and Internet Explorer provides an excellent way to spell check your posts. I created a simple video demonstration of how it works, which you can check out below. You basically type up your post, click the little “ABC” button on the Google toolbar and it will “highlight” all of the words that it thinks is spelled wrong. You then click on the word and it has a dropdown menu of suggestions. You can either select a word from the list or tell it that the word is actually spelled correctly so that it doesn’t highlight it any more. It’s the best and fastest way (that I have found) to spell check posts.
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