Internet

Changes Are Good, But Somethings Don’t Change

My experimenting with my site(s) has brought thousands of changes to it (them). I’ve played with templates and themes, modules, and hundreds of other features and tweaks. But there is one thing I’ve learned (not the hard way, yet): Leave URLs alone. Search engines need URLs to work with your site. If they all suddenly change, they may be looking at nothing, or your site will get lost forever.

It’s very tempting to all of a sudden change your permalink structure, or suddenly switch to them. Unless you have absolutely no choice in the matter, either take ‘em or leave ‘em at the beginning. One change in the middle will disturb the SEO status’s equilibrium (that a new one), with potentially lethal effects on the site’s ranking. Jonathan agrees with me.

I haven’t documented this, but it may be something that you would want to keep in mind. Some things are better off “like old times,” and left undisturbed. Perhaps I will report on this again in the future and see if my theory has proven itself.

Need For Feeds – Web Style

A while ago I got into the habit of reading posts from several blogs (like Lorelle on WordPress and Dave Seah blog) in an attempt to do these things:

1. Learn new things.
2. Waste time.

Now the only way reading people’s feeds can help me accomplish those goals is if they actually make posts on their blogs for me to read. Today, I looked at the ever-so-convenient Feeds menu in Opera, and saw not a single feed with new posts. I immediately thought to myself, “I am so bored, I need something to do.”

A minute later Opera refreshed the feeds, bringing in my daily dose of reading. What a relief that was!

Common (but Serious) Page Design Flaws

Somehow, I have a knack for finding the ups and downs of the design and architecture of Web sites. Some sites (like Gmail, a true G-dsend for nerds like me) really work well and look nice, but others (like Boost Mobile’s site) are horrible. How is it possible to ruin a design? Keep reading.

Light Text On Dark Backgrounds

This just may be the killer. After reading a particular blog that follows this practice, I was seeing white lines in my eyes after getting up from the computer (a rare occurance, but I gotta use eventuallyventually). Sure this might be good for some who need high contrast, but for the rest of us, it’s just plain ol’ bad.

Disgusting URLs

Although this doesn’t really make or break anything, it’s nice to show a user addresses that make sense. And for some (err, many, especially those using Mambo/Joomla with one of several SEF extensions, or WordPress) people, it’s a piece of cake to set up your site with this in mind. Hint: look for mod_rewrite when buying your hosting.

Stupid HTML Errors

Now for the killer. There are so many sites that have bad HTML clogging up our precious bandwidth, yet their admins refuse to clean up after their act. I have experience with this, in the form of at least two sites of my own, and one forum (whose name is withheld for the admin’s well-being), that suffer from some simple HTML invalidation. What’s even worse is that the admin of the forum refuses to clean up after himself :

I don’t care about these things. Please stop pestering me with this nonsense.

If you take a look at his code Continue reading »

The Beta Boost

With many of today’s sites, it is common to see a little Beta indicator by the logo. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon. Now although I don’t actively use (or proclaim use of, at least) any beta-version add-ons on this site, I though it would be funny to add beta somewhere here. Take a look at the header and see what I’ve done.

Best Traffic Booster: Content Is King

After looking through my stats in Google Analytics lately, I noticed a trend in my search engine referrals. Ever since my post about my experience with the Math A Regents, I received dozens of hits from Google and other search engines. In addition, various other posts (including my mention of the Windows XP Royale theme) have brought me reliable traffic, which indicates that they are what people are looking for.

Rule numero uno: Make lots of good content. People (and search engines) look for pages that have something useful to say and that say it well. If possible, use spell checking (or copy and paste the text into another app and spell-check it there) before publishing you articles. Google Hacks says that with the advent of spell checking from search engines, spelling is as important to your content as water is to you (I like that metaphor).

Another trick I’ve discovered is to write in a timely fashion. Timing is a key factor in getting traffic. If you write about skiing and snowboarding, late fall and winter is probably the best time. Similarly, the optimal timeframe for content on roller coasters or surfing is late spring and summer. For example, if I would have written about the Math A Regents exam in August, I don’t think I would have as many hits (also, people were using “January 2007″ in their search phrases, which brought them to the archive page of that timeframe, but this is a side effect). If you want to write about a particular topic, take a few moments and think about whether it’s relevant at that time. If the answer is yes, pour out your thoughts, otherwise, write it down and save it for later (just don’t forget about it).

Finally, I suggest using SEF-friendly URLs or pretty permalinks (or whatever they are called in your respective CMS), or paying attention to your URLs if you hand code your site. Although I don’t seem to notice any effect from using this tip, I am guessing that it helps a little bit. At the very least, it makes your URLs look nice to your visitors.

Flickr: The Perfect Web 2.0 Site

I started using Flickr last week, and I must say that it is very impressive. The site is smooth, simple and functional. Flickr follows many of the Web 2.0 themes, including tags and widgets of sorts.

Upon first seeing the site, I was impressed at the Web 2.0 feel of it. The navigation bar at the top of the pages are smart – they allow quick access to common features. Searching through the large community’s photos is easy too: you can search your photos, everyone’s photos, or Flickr groups from one search box.

I found that uploading photos is extremely easy with one of several Flickr Uploadr programs, which can be found for most of the popular operating systems. The Windows version is really a snap. You can drag pictures into the window or ad them with a browse dialog box. You can add tags to all the pictures you are uploading (although all of the pictures will share the same set of tags, which is not always desirable) and place them in a set before the upload process begins.

Flickr’s site has many tools for working with your photos, not all of which I have experimented with yet. A kind of useful one is the mapping, which lets you tag a photo with coordinates from a Yahoo-powered map. Privacy advocates should be careful and remember not to tag pictures with, say, the location of your house. I also like tagging, although thinking of the best ones (not just for photos, but also for blog posts and the like) can be challenging.

Flickr beats Kodak EasyShare Gallery (formerly Ofoto) hands down. Even though I have used Kodak’s service for a while, the features that Flickr give you are way more comprehensive, and experienced users will find much to like in the Web 2.0-oriented product.

When To Quit Blogging

Lorelle reports on when people should stop blogging: when it’s getting boring, when you don’t have time, when you can’t think of anymore original content, and a few others. Do you think it’s time to stop blogging?

Joomla: Content Management For Any Level

Having been a user of Joomla, and it’s predecessor, Mambo, I can easily tell you that the two products are very powerful. Mambo and Joomla are content management systems that help even novice users manage the content on their sites easily. In this review I will be focusing on the strengths of the powerful Joomla framework and how it can be used for a community site.

Joomla by itself is one immense package, giving you lots of features right out of the box. Aside from content management, you get a links system, contacts pages, an RSS reader and several other basic components. If you are looking to build a small site for your business, this will often suffice.

With some extensions (as they are formally known, and include modules, components and plugins) you can transform your site into a powerful community or intranet. Joomla provides the framework for components like Joomlaboard (a fully-integrated forum) and Community Builder (for user profiling and member lists). Hundreds of third-party components exist, and cover dozens of applications, from help desks to event calendars.

If you already use certain tools on your web site, like Simple Machines Forum or Coppermine Gallery, there are components released by the community to integrate them with the Joomla environment.

For changing the look and feel of your site, Joomla has a templating system that uses PHP for its template tags. Although many people find this to be rather annoying, the next major release (Joomla 1.5) will have an new system with designer-friendly tags. However there will also be backwards compatibility for current templates as well.

For many kinds of sites, simple static HTML won’t make the cut. Communities and enterprises need more that the traditional web-site building tools. Content management systems like Joomla will fulfill many needs of these organizations, and can be easily extended to fit their needs.