As web designers, we’ve grown pretty good at understanding how to create a modern, semantic, accessible website using XHTML and CSS. We understand what makes a good website, and how to make it happen.

When it comes time to design emails though, do all the same rules apply? Are there things we should be doing specifically for email that don’t make sense on a website? In this article we’ll discuss the technical, design and information elements that make up a successful HTML email.

Link: 2008 Email Design Guidelines

Lately I’ve been sprucing up my collection of software applications, and spending time with some good online tutorials on my favorites. Many of these tutorials are free, and in this post, I’ll round up several that I’ve found worth paying attention to.

Tutorials for:

• Editing images
• Using Unix
• Open Office applications
• Microsoft Office applications
• And more…

Link: Free Tutorial Sites for Honing Your App Skills

The best contacts and resources to help you get it done.

Link: Guide to Twitter for Business

If you want your site to show up prominently in search engines like Google, your website content management system can help - but not all CMSs are created equal. We suggest the features to look for to help with search engine optimization.

Link: Eight Ways a CMS Can Help with Search Engine Optimization

Same principles apply to business, too.

Q: What best practices should my organization follow to ensure our email reaches our supporters?

A: At NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference last month, I talked about the things that affect email delivery and the best practices required to avoid common delivery problems.

Recipient complaints are the single most important factor affecting email delivery. If recipients report your email as spam to their Internet Service Provider or email software, your organization’s communications may be rejected, diverted to the spam folder, or mangled by image suppression.

To keep your organization’s complaint rates low, it is critical to…

Continue reading at: Ask the Expert: What can we do to make sure our organization’s email gets delivered to our supporter’s inbox?

Evan Callahan advises:

Salesforce is so reliable and available, it is easy to forget to back up your data locally. Lately, I’ve was reminded that it is a good idea to back up your Salesforce data from time to time. Salesforce allows administrators to download a complete export up to once a week.

It isn’t that you have to fear for the Salesforce database crashing or being lost. I recommend downloading for a couple reasons:

• It could help if you ever accidentally make unintended changes to data and want to return to an earlier state.
• It could also be helpful in the event that Salesforce or your internet access ever goes “down” at a critical time – you’d have a way to access your data offline.

To download the backup, go to Setup (Administration) | Data Management | Data Export. Click the button – a while later you’ll get an email with a link to download your data file. Save it somewhere safe.

Alternatively, if you use Demand Tools, you can back up to a file as often as you like. I use this to create a copy of the database in a Microsoft Access file.

Link: Backing Up Your Data

…you may find yourself with an unexpected offer to accept advertising, do some consulting work, or speak for pay. If you don’t have a business of your own, or are new to starting businesses, you’re probably at a loss for some of the details of what you need to do. So let’s work them out, keeping everything as simple as possible.

Link: Checklists for starting your first business

The biggest secret of innovation is that anyone can do it. The reason is simple: It’s just not that hard. Look up the word “innovate” in any dictionary and see what it actually means, instead of what you think it means. You’ll find something like this: To innovate is “to introduce something new.” That’s it. It doesn’t say you need to be a creative genius, a workaholic, or even have on clean underwear. It’s just three little words: introduce something new. And I promise that by the end of this essay, you’ll have all the secrets needed to do it yourself.

Link: Essay 58 - How to innovate right now