a web site like ALL FOODS NATURAL

Thank you for asking. We are really thrilled about how well All Foods Natural is doing in such a short time.

You will need a computer, of course. We are using Windows based desktops and laptops, but for anyone new to Internet, I would advise to consider Mac computers, because, despite all the protection software, we spend a considerable amount of time fighting viruses, spam, and all the nasty things lurking about there. Those things are not so much an issue for Macs. We use Windows XP Pro.

Other hardware includes a Canon i9900 printer, another hp photosmart printer, not the last hp model but working, and an Epsom Perfection 1660 scanner. We got first a Logitech cordless laser mouse and we liked it so much that we graduated to a laser keyboard.

Upgrading, upgrading, we have got to a wireless router, and a few desktops and notebooks.

Our favorite page editor is still Dreamweaver 8 Win/Mac, which takes care of most of the site design, coding and FTP functions -All Foods Natural would be unmanageable without it- but we have graduated to the whole Studio 8 for Win/Mac. Expect more action when we master it. We also use Notetab Light to format some pages. We use Cute FTP on occasion.

We started using Real Draw Pro for graphics and design; it is a good program to start and we still use it. We always had Adobe Creative Suite Premium with Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2, in our wish list (we already had Adobe Acrobat) and we finally got it. Again, we have to master it, but we are excited about the possibility to show our images.

If your heart is set on all these tools, as our was, get the Adobe Creative Suite CS2 Premium Web Bundle With Macromedia Studio 8 and you will save money.

We use the whole Microsoft Office XP Pro. We first write everything in Microsoft's Word as a word file, because we it is very easy to edit. It also has spelling checks and helps with translation; Marta finds this very useful as English is not her mother tongue. Most of our dates, links and statistics are dealt with in Excel worksheets.

We used Access first to manage our links, until we got Arelis and, though we had been only using it for a few weeks, we were pleased with the results and decided to get IBP9, as both programs integrate beautifully. We expected to achieve a greater level of automation for the site, now that we are growing so fast, and to have more time for ohter things. Both exceeded our expectations.

We host several sites with Hostica. We have opened recently one site, World Food and Wine, with SiteSell. We love them both and we will continue with them. We found ExpressionEngine and decided to take it for a spin in our next project.

DO WE HAVE A SECRET WEAPON?

Honest writing. Not just simply food writing; we also do our own copywriting. We needed to do something different from what everyone else was doing online, and we could not afford a copywriter... we decided to learn the craft ourselves, never intending to work as copywriters but to learn how to promote All Foods Natural in the most effective way.

Being new to Internet, we went wrong many times before getting it right; it's been trial an error for most of it. All Foods Natural traffic popularity has been growing non stop and our visitors take the time to know the site. We know that the pages, ads and headlines that work best are those where we write in the way we learnt in our copywriting course. Their advice never went wrong.