Blog - Nicola Tweed

50 resources to help you create a website you’ll love

21 September 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design, Freelance Life 39 Comments

Designing your own website or blog can either be one of the most rewarding tasks you’ll ever undertake or one of the most overwhelming. According to Tech Made Easy there are just over 180,000,000 active websites out there so I can totally understand if you are feeling the overwhelm!

Over the last year I’ve tired and tested many, many resources and tools to make my life and my clients lives easier so today I’m going to be sharing with you pretty much every resource in my toolbox that you will need to build a website or blog you’ll love!

Lessons learnt from Hello Ambassador 2015

8 September 2015 Filed Under: Freelance Life 5 Comments

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of continuous personal and professional development, I thrive on opportunities that push me out of my comfort zone and expose me to new ways of thinking. So when Ands proposed we go up to Joburg for a weekend of creative food for thought I jump right onto the Hello Ambassador website and made sure I was one of those early birds.

Hello Ambassador is an annual festival held in Joburg for Creatives by Creatives. The festival, now in it’s third year, featured inspiring and insightful talks by industry experts from a variety of creative disciplines. In addition to this mind blowing musicians, beat boxers and break dancers entertained us during the lunch time street festival.

I came away from the festival feeling inspired, pushed to aim higher and confident knowing that anything is possible. There were many lessons learnt over the two days but today I thought I’d share a few of my favourite with you…

Tous Les Jour’s spring relaunch & 7 reasons why I love Shopify

3 September 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design, Freelance Life 3 Comments

This week was all about the spring revamp & relaunch for two of my web design and development clients: newbie client Ask Ashe and my first ever client Tous Les Jours – the client that launched my freelancing career! After last months hectic late nights and early mornings I am excited to finally share with you the website revamp process we went through with Tous Les Jours and the awesome Shopify ECommerce platform they decided to use.

An interview with the insanely creative Andrea Barras

2 September 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design, For the Designers 4 Comments

If you’ve been following my blog over the last couple of months you may have noticed a sprinkling of Andrea’s name here and there and you may even have wondered why I seem to mention her so frequently – well today, after months of (my own) procrastination, I am finally getting round to this long over due blog post and will be introducing you to this insanely creative lady.

A beginners guide to SEO for bloggers

28 August 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design, Freelance Life 4 Comments

I’ll be honest and say I’m no expert in this field and also that it’s not really a service I offer my clients but over the last year, through many hours of research, I’ve learnt a great deal about the subject. It’s a huge topic that’s why today I’m only going to be scratching the surface by sharing this simple beginners guide. My hope is that whether you’re a small business owner or blogger who’s seeking to get more hits, like or comments you’ll find this post helpful.

A price comparison: domain names & hosting

25 August 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design, For the Designers 4 Comments

When you’re first getting your blog or business up and running there are many factors that you will need to take into consideration; one of them being purchasing a domain name and hosting. I touched on this subject last week by discussing the important factors you need to take into consideration before choosing your host provider and by sharing some of the frequently asked questions I get asked, so to continue, today I’m going to be reviewing what some of South Africa’s top host providers offer and their prices.

There are two main reasons why I’m only going to be reviewing South African host providers, the first is because of the ever fluctuating Rand to US Dollar exchange rate and the second is because having a support team that’s in your own country just makes life that much easier!

Some frequently asked questions about Domain Names & Hosting

21 August 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design 2 Comments

Following on from yesterday’s post – The important factors to consider before choosing a host provider – I thought I’d share with you today a few of the questions relating to Domain Name & Hosting that I frequently get asked…

The important factors to consider before choosing a host provider

20 August 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design 7 Comments

When setting up your first website or blog it’s not uncommon to get extremely confused by all the technical terms being thrown around by hosting companies. You’ll read about things like web traffic, storage space, databases, hosting and of course domain names. All of which, as a newbie in the tech world, will probably cause your eyes to glaze over in either utter boredom or total confusion! Through research I’ve learnt to spot the basic items that you’ll need in order to run your blog or website like clockwork so today I’m going to share with you my knowledge in the hope that you’ll feel more confident when making your next or first hosting purchase.

A quick tip to improve the SEO of your blog’s images

19 August 2015 Filed Under: DIY Web Design 5 Comments

Anyone that has a blog or website will probably be aware that SEO is important for gaining more clients, readers and shares. It’s a huge topic that many bloggers find rather overwhelming but there are a few simple things that you can action that will make a huge difference. Take today’s for example, I know so many bloggers who don’t do this yet it’s such a easy thing to do to build your site’s SEO!

10 quick action steps you can take today to make your business more successful

17 August 2015 Filed Under: For the Designers, Freelance Life 4 Comments

Last week we learnt that consistent and daily action steps are what help your business become even more successful than it already is but knowing where to start, getting started and finding the time can be the hard part. So today I thought I’d share with you ten quick action steps you can implement in your business today that will take it one step up the success ladder.