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Welcome to the inaugural edition of my e-newsletter, Web Enlightenment. This newsletter focuses on giving you practical, interesting insights into how to successfully use technology as a tool to improve the way you do business. Bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding that all entrepreneurs have will help you make money online.

"Web Enlightenment" will be emailed to you at this address every other Tuesday.

All the best,

Plowing your whole front yard!
...and other sage wisdom I learned from my rural neighbors

As most of you know I am a new resident of rural Maine, having moved here in late 2005. As such I have been pretty amazed to learn about the realities of farm living and rural life - from cutting our own firewood to making maple syrup to gathering eggs from our chickens - it has been quite an experience for this pasty geek.

And then we come to snow plowing - the joyous experience of clearing mounds of snow from around our home and barn. We live down a long dirt road and while the county does plow to our mailbox, that's almost a quarter mile from our front door. My mother taught me to not be a sexist, and being a geek has encouraged the aforementioned pastiness. So my wife Amy handles all of our plowing, while I am responsible for providing hot tea for her on plow breaks. I'm responsible for other things too, but stress what you are good at - I'm a fine tea maker.

December was an incredibly snowy month - apparently the "snowiest" on record since 1970 and the third highest snowfall ever. With all the drifting it is hard to guess, but we had about five or six feet of snowfall here in the mountains.

As all of our neighbors began doing all their snow removal work I noticed something pretty interesting - many people were plowing their whole front yard. I asked my lovely wife and plow expert about this and she explained - "once a pile of snow has sat around for a little while, it turns into an immovable pile of ice". They were plowing the whole front yard to make room for a winters worth of snow to come.

So by now you've got to be wondering what all of this has to do with websites. You should build your website navigation in the same way people plow heavy snows in December, with an eye on the future.

Most of the time when a website is constructed, the navigational elements - the buttons, bars, links and so on that help you get around - are a carefully crafted critical element. But just like that pile of plowed snow, over time the navigation becomes a pile of immovable ice and additional pages are added willy-nilly. Eventually the site owner is left with little choice but to scrap the navigation and build a new one, but during the time between new navigations, usability - and therefore your customers - suffers greatly.

When you build a site navigation go ahead and plow the whole front yard - plan where you'll put the additional buttons and links you'll need when you add more content to your site. You are adding more content to your site regularly, right? *smile* But that's a topic for another issue of Web Enlightenment.

Speaking of speaking...
Places to be if you want to get enlightened

My next seminar is tomorrow - Wednesday January 16th - at the Lakeside Theater in Rangeley, Maine. DotCommerce 101 - Free and open to the public. Please RSVP to the Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber office: info@rangeleymaine.com or (207)-864-5571

As always you can see all of upcoming seminars by clicking here.