We received a request for a free site analysis this week, asking us to help debug a site built in Microsoft FrontPage and wouldn’t display correctly on a Mac.

As it turned out, the site displayed incorrectly on our Macs too — none of the graphics displayed and the alignment was odd. But it also looked wrong on our Windows PC when we used Mozilla Firefox. In fact, it looked OK only in Microsoft Internet Explorer — which is not unusual. FrontPage is a problematic tool and often doesn’t work well with anything but Internet Explorer (and sometimes not even with it).

Unfortunately, we don’t work with FrontPage (precisely because it is so error-prone), so I had tell the site owner I couldn’t fix her site. We could redesign the site if she wanted, but I guessed that she was on an extremely limited budget, and she’d used FrontPage precisely because she couldn’t afford to pay for customer site design. What other options did she have?

If you’re in the same situation, I offer you the same advice I gave her: Start by choosing any web editor other than FrontPage. There are several great products out there, including NetObjects (which is relatively inexpensive but can create excellent websites) and Macromedia Dreamweaver (which is expensive and high-powered — overwhelming for a novice web designer).

There are also quality free products: Check out Amaya, which is a straightforward web editor available for free. You can find out more about it and download it here.

If you’re new to web design, or even if you’re experienced but don’t have a ton of time, you will probably also need a page design layout in which to work, so you don’t have to create a design from scratch. You can find some nice free templates at the Opensource Web Design Project.

The quality and style of the free templates varies a lot, but check out these templates in particular — they’re relatively simple but look sharp and would be flexible enough for many uses:

• HappyLine
• Ray_06
• Library

New designs are being added daily, so you’re likely to find something to suit any need.

But whatever you do, stay away from FrontPage!

RyanC at Signal vs. Noise posted a terrific article (“Small Biz 101: Tips for Increasing Sales”) listing ideas for how small business owners can create and increase sales. The list is clear, thoughtful, and helpful — be sure to check out the comments as well.

For us at Big Big Design, our greatest sales tool has always been constant personal networking. I started working as a free-lance web designer in 2000, doing that part-time while I held down another job. My initial clients were friends and acquaintences I’d met through other activities: writing groups and workshops, the Gist Street Reading Series, the Butler Little Theatre, Geek Night in Pittsburgh.

Most of my business for the first few years can be traced back to two sites I built for free in 2000: a site to promote The Frantic Woman’s Guide to Life and a site for the Gist Street Reading Series. They’re simple sites — I’d design them differently today — but they were each effective for my clients.

Even today, I find new clients primarily through activities. At the bank, at the coffee shop, at a bar during happy hour: People do business with people they like and trust, so if you’re likeable and trustworthy (or at least can appear to be) you can find new sales opportunities anywhere.

Another tip I’d suggest for any small business owner is to be persistent in sales. Follow up on every lead, ask questions to discover what your prospects want, ask more questions if a propect says he’s not interested, and check in a few months later with anyone who turned you down. As my father used to say, “‘No’ is really a request for more information.”

Everybody is a blogger these days, even television characters.

It’s not new for TV shows to have blogs: Rockstar INXS, for example, published blogs for each member of INXS and the “rocker” contestants, most of whom posted updates throughout the series. TV blogs like this give a behind-the-scenes peek at the show’s working, add context, and most importantly connect further with the viewer, helping keep him interested — hopefully enough to keep watching and maintain the show’s ratings. One can’t expect them to be the most candid blogs on the web, but they can at least be interesting.

But I was surprised to see a “Blogs” menu option on the site for the USA Network’s Monk. According to the site, “Monk blogs offer a fresh perspective from the minds who make Monk the obsessive-compulsive detective we love and from characters like Natalie and Capt. Stottlemeyer who suffer because of it.”

So far there is just one blog: that of Natalie Teeger, Monk’s assistant. That is, not the actress playing Natalie but the fictional assistant herself.

Blog purists abhor fictional blogs, but I am for anything that entertains and engages site visitors. (For an excellent case study and more thoughts on the controversies over blogs by fictional characters, check out “All I Want for Christmas is a Blog Gone Bad,” by Georgia Patrick at Duct Tape Marketing.

So the problem with Natalie’s blog isn’t that it’s fictional — it’s that it’s boring.

In truth it’s no more boring than most of the blogs on the web, but it has so much potential that it doesn’t fulfill. Natalie could reference events in recent or past episodes; continue the storylines for subplots; tell us more about herself or her daughter.

Even better, she could invite viewers to suggest ways to cope with Adrian Monk. Maybe viewer comments could be tied into a promotional event, with the prize being to visit the set of the show and meet the cast — a mystery for which Monk needs help, and the viewers get extra clues through the blogs, maybe discuss in comments or on a moderated message board.

Instead, we get what looks to be a rejected subplot, repackaged as a whiny blog rant. It’s a missed opportunity so far; then again, it’s still a new element of the Monk site. I am impressed that the network experiments with promotional concepts like character blogs and web exclusives. Maybe they have bigger and better plans for the blogs in the future. Stay tuned.