Web Dev Notes

ArticleDashBoard.com is a website which allows authors to write and share their articles online! Submitting articles online is a great way to get discovered and to boost traffic to your website. Lynn Little at SeoDance.com suggests some good websites to submit articles too and explains why you want to do so!

For the Web Developers reading this, perhaps writing/sharing content is not your main interest if you are not writing a blog. For you guys however, you may be interested in knowing that you can download the Article Dashboard software and use it to start running your own article directory website!

Thanks to the continued support from 451 Press, I will likely test this software on the web-hosting they kindly provide me with and then write up a review for you all! If anybody has any experience running an Article Dashboard website, please let us know what you think about the software!

Update: I now have a website called Writer Database up and running that is using the Article Dashboard software. The site has been online for a few months and so far I am very satisfied with the results! There have been no problems, the software is very easy to use, and people are definitely eager to submit when doing so is free and beneficial to them!

Feel free to visit the website and submit a few articles!

The only issue that I have with Article Dashboard right now is that approving articles can be quite a time consuming task! While it has not been a problem, thus far, if the site were to suddenly take off and receive hundreds of articles a day, it would become a full-time job approving new submissions! It would be great if instead there was an option to auto-accept new submissions and then give users the ability to report or flag poor content so that at this point an editor can take action. Meanwhile, editors can still maintain the site and moderate the content, but in the meantime those submitting articles will not end up in a huge-backlog delay because their content would appear right away.

Another thing that I found quite confusing at first was the method for subscribing to RSS feeds. When you click a feed, it seems like nothing happens. Many users would likely take this to mean the page is broken or the feeds are currently unavailable. However, what actually occurs is that the address to the feed is posted in a text-box at the top of the screen. At this point users can copy/paste this info to access the feed. It would definitely be way better if clicking the feed link simply opened the feed, since most browsers will take action on this and ask the user how they would then like to subscribe to it.

Overall though I am very pleased with the results! I definitely recommend the software to anyone who wishes to setup their own directory!

The easiest way to boost your websites rank and increase profitability is to download the Alexa toolbar.

What is Alexa? It is a site that ranks all websites on the internet. Many people will use this as a reference when estimating the value of a website or when deciding whether or not to advertise on a website.

How does it work? Let’s ask Alexa:

Alexa’s traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period. A site’s ranking is based on a combined measure of reach and pageviews. Reach is determined by the number of unique Alexa users who visit a site on a given day. Pageviews are the total number of Alexa user URL requests for a site. However, multiple requests for the same URL on the same day by the same user are counted as a single pageview. The site with the highest combination of users and pageviews is ranked #1.

So in a nutshell, if you have the Alexa toolbar, then every time you visit a website, you will basically cast a vote for that site. All your votes and the votes of everyone using the Alexa toolbar then get added up in order to rank all the websites in the world.

Guess what? Nobody visits your website more than you! Download the Alexa toolbar now so that every time you visit or update your website, you cast yourself some votes and boost your own rank!

The Alexa toolbar itself is actually pretty useful too. It will give you a search box for browsing the web and list the current rank of the page you are browsing. You will also have the ability to easily find and access more information about websites you visit and even compare your website against others.

Alexa is owned by Amazon which is a well known trusted company. Your Alexa toolbar will also give you a handy little link to Amazon.com and all of the great products they offer at excellent prices.

What are you waiting for? Download the Alexa toolbar now!

Joomla is a free content management system which many people use to easily run their own website with little to no programming knowledge.

One great thing about Joomla is that it is very easy to change the look of your website simply by downloading a new template. The following video will show you how to install a new template so you can quickly move on to the next step of filling your website with awesome content!

As Google continues to grow talk continues to spread regarding them secretly making plans for world domination.

The once cool & fun search engine is now becoming the big bad villain. Is this justified, or just the inevitable result of expansion? Does Google really plan to telepathically send Googlebot into my brain in the near future to index my every thought? What about all those privacy issues people keep bringing up involving Google?

I believe it is just quite impossible to be on everybody’s good side once you become the head of the class, regardless of what you do. For example, Matt Cutts has a great post about how Google does more than most companies to protect privacy, despite Google receiving so much attention for this issue.

So is Google really evil? Personally, I’d feel really hypocritical saying anything besides that I love Google, seeing as I use Gmail, Analytics, Reader, Blogger and of course Google search on a daily basis. These are all extremely powerful tools offered for free. Still, people are constantly having discussions regarding what Google is “really” doing and how it is using these tools to accomplish world domination.

Here are some interesting articles on the topic:

• IsGoogleEvil.com
• Is Google Evil at O’Reilly
• Google vs Evil at Wired.com
• And Then There were Four
• If Google Really was Evil

Last week I decided to move a blog to a different directory on my web server. Doing so actually turned out to be quite easy thanks to the way the Wordpress developers have set things up! In fact, moving your blog is easier than formatting text in Wordpress!

Please make sure you follow the steps below closely. While it is very fast and easy, you could complicate things for yourself if you do anything out of order!

“Moving the WordPress files from one location on your server to another - changing its URL - requires some special care.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress“

Wordpress is a very powerful tool. Find out how you can use Wordpress to build online communities!

Bugs suck. We hate when a program crashes or when someone hacks our website to post pictures of us in that pink bunny costume we were dared to wear several years prior… Yes, bugs are horrible little critters we hope to never encounter even though we inevitably run into many which could have been easily avoided. For example, do you take the time to make sure all your software is up-to-date? If you’re running Wordpress for your blog, do you always update to the newest version as soon as possible.

Even if you haven’t had any trouble with your software yet doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hurry to upgrade ASAP! While a bug can sometimes just be a small annoyance, other times it could be catastrophic. You wouldn’t want your whole database to disappear and lose every single post you have ever written! I do hope you make backups…!

more funny pictures

There is always a glitch in the program you are running. If it’s a good program that has been tested properly prior to release, then chances are you won’t run into that glitch right away. However, as soon as you install a plugin or try something unusual with the software, the chances that you find that remaining glitch increase significantly! A program is never bug free! Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise! The older your content management system gets, whether it be Wordpress, Joomla, php-Nuke, etc, the more likely someone has found a way to hack it. Chances are, once this occurs, the developers of those software products hear about it very quickly and then end up releasing a new version with fixes to the problem. Just because your website hasn’t been affected by the problem yet will not change the fact that it is vulnerable until you take the time to upgrade!

I’ve received questions from several individuals with regards to how I am able to include HTML code in my Wordpress posts. For example, if you want to make a word bold, you type <strong>bold</strong>. So the question is, how then did I write <strong>bold</strong> without the word becoming bold? The other questions I’ve been asked is, “How the heck did you do that indentation?!”. Take a look at this post for example! Can you put blocks of code like this on your page? YES!

The magic behind formatting a post like this is actually very simple. Writing a post in Wordpress is a simplified way of inserting a few paragraphs of HTML formatted text into a web page. When you make a word bold or add a link, the text is surrounded by tags which will tell the browser how to format it’s appearance on the screen. HTML tags always begin with “<”, so as soon the browser encounters this symbol, it will check to see if it is a valid HTML tag, and if so, take the appropriate actions. If you actually just want to display the “<” symbol on screen and have the browser ignore the possibility that it could be HTML code, then you need to instead write the ASCII entity name.

I know many of you just grumbled and felt discouraged at the mention of ASCII entity names, but don’t worry I promise it really is very easy! Basically, all you need to know is that some characters have an ASCII entity name which you can type in your posts to display the character. For example, the ASCII character name for < is:

Try it out! Open up wordpress and type the above ASCII character. When you preview the page, you will see that the character < is displayed instead. The new mystery then is, how did I write the ASCII character above without it being turned into “<”? hmmm…!

• Go here for a full list of ASCII character names

The next question was related to indentation in posts. The first thing I did was put my code within a blockquote. If you are using Wordpress, you can simply highlight text, then click the “b-quote” button to do this. This indents a whole paragraph of text, commonly used for quoting references by bloggers. Next, I surrounded my blockquote with a tag called <pre></pre>. This tag is used to define preformatted text which means that the text enclosed between the tags will be displayed as it is typed. In a nutshell, if you are typing a post in Wordpress and hit the spacebar 20 times between each word, when you hit preview, it will still only show a single space between each word. However, if you use <pre>text to be preformatted here</pre> in your post, then all text between the tags will display your text as it was written, meaning multiple spaces can be displayed.

Try it out. Copy/Paste the below into Wordpress and preview it to see the effect:

<pre>

This is the first line, with no indent.
     This line has 5 spaces in front of it!
          This line has 10 spaces in front of it!

</pre>

Enjoy!

Update:I’d just like to say it’s really interesting how this post first came to be. The only reason I thought about writing on this subject is because readers contacted me asking about it. I am very eager to answer any and all such questions! Please keep the feedback coming so that I can focus on providing content that is of interest to YOU!

Remember back in April when I became the new writer for Web Dev Notes? I started off by introducing Joomla, PHP-Nuke, phpBB and PHP. I even recommended some cool software like the ALT-Tab Replacer, Virtual Desktop Manager and the Firebug plugin for Firefox. After a slow start, I finally got my big break when my article Formatting Text in Wordpress started to bring in steady traffic!

In my early Web Dev Notes days I stuck to covering more technical topics such as how to insert CSS on your website or how to create your first PHP page. However, after testing out the use of humor in posts like the Top Ten Stupidest Joomla! Administrator Tricks and When will GoogleBot index my Brain I discovered that this unique approach was actually quite well received! I also realized website marketing and SEO was a very popular aspect of web development so I decided to venture into this area with posts like The Battle for Traffic - SEO vs Content, No Contacts, No Money and Validate Your Website for Better SEO!

Of course, even though I would later discover that marketing and SEO would be a very popular topic on my blog, at the time I had no idea yet! Looking at my stats, the posts about PHP were the most trafficked so I decided to cover this area more extensively! In May I introduced some great web development resources and then discussed the relationship between PHP and a Web Server/Browser in order to build a solid foundation before diving right into PHP for the rest of the month. I then covered how to comment PHP code, the debate over using Print or Echo, how to use variables, how to use concatenation with variables and variable naming conventions. Using this introductory material, I was then able to go even deeper and cover topics like using arrays, if/else programming logic, nested IF/ELSE conditional statements, and PHP Loops. Since the topic of loops is already an extensively covered subject, I decided to make my articles sound unique by naming them, “The magic of WHILE Loops“, “The incredible FOR Loop Multi-Tasker“, and “The FOREACH Loop Love Affair with Mr. Array“.

In order to stay informed, I subscribed to many RSS feeds relating to my topic. In so doing I noticed that Digg and Google were two very popular topics. I decided to explore these subjects a bit with articles like, “List of Google Hoaxes“, “Who’s Digging You?“, “Google’s PageRank Explained by Phil Craven“, “Declare Warr on Digg Doondles!“, “I Hacked Google and Stole Their Robot lolol“, and “Are Your Archives Burying You Worse Than Digg“. These articles continue to bring in traffic to this day!

During the month of June I was taking a course on Interface Design so decided to cover similar topics on Web Dev Notes. I began by discussing the advantages of using personas during development and then decided to list nine causes of software error before discussing software quality and the three general principles of quality assurance. I introduced the subject of human/computer interaction and demonstrated how good design can help us better interact with computers. In fact, making the interaction between humans and computers as easy as possible is an important goal of improved user interface design. I also mentioned that building the right product is even more important than building a product right.

It was around mid-June when I also began to notice how well my SEO, blogging and marketing tips posts were doing! I therefore decided to write about the guaranteed way to generate incoming links and conquering the crowded niche! I also wrote about some issues I was having with trying to follow my own advice when I noticed my trackbacks were being kidnapped and asked if it were possible if my bullets were killing them! Not wanting to stray too far from the very roots of web development, I also introduced the Pixel Groovy website, discussed how to created animated favicons and threw in 21 CSS tutorials answering frequently asked questions.

During the month of July I continued to cover a lot of marketing topics. I created a new Top 11 Posts section and asked if people thought linking to other sites increases incoming traffic. I also started to learn a great deal about blogging and realized that my very own archives contained in itself the power to help WebDevNotes succeed. I therefore stopped considering old posts like dirty socks thrown into a laundry bin, and instead began viewing them as cornerstone content that should be linked back to frequently so that new visitors could access my best content easily.

Upon making this realization, I began offering my visitors some blogging advice with the help of Lolcats to make the posts more fun and easy to read. For example:

Don’t let Chihuahua’s hold back your website! Start working with the purrrrfect partners and plot your plan for success. Make sure you plant the seeds for success early and listen to feedback so you can feed your readers a happy meal. Make good use of article directories and other marketing techniques and never forget the secrets to writing a successful blog!

In conclusion, to those who say linking to old content is difficult, I beg to differ! Don’t let those archives go to waste

Drupal, phpBB and Wordpress are among the most popular content management tools used for building active communities. By building a community, you are creating more than a website. You are giving your visitors something to become a part of and a feeling of belonging. By creating a community, you are more likely to see return visitors, comments and increased page views.

A web site is something people search for when they need information. Once they consume the information, they leave. A community is something people join, something people will open their computer to go check up on, something people will contribute too.

If you’d like to learn more about creating a prosperous online community, I recommend checking out, Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. This is a very good book written by Robert Douglass, Mike Little and Jared Smith. Douglass is a developer and member of the security team for the Drupal project. He has plenty of experience with content management systems and knows what he is talking about. Mike Little is one of the Wordpress founders and developers. Wordpress is the software which powers my site here and millions of others around the world! Jared Smith is a support team member of phpBBHacks and has therefore been involved with phpBB for many years and has helped create many mods.

The book has sections on Drupal, phpBB and Wordpress which cover everything from configuration to maintaining your website. If you are looking to get started creating your community, this is a great resource to help get you setup and running quick. It contains all the information you will need to be successful!

If anybody has read any other great books on the topic of content management, please let me know as I would be eager to check them out!

Last night I was doing some work on my BattleCity Classic website, which is powered by Joomla, when I came across this article regarding stupid things Joomla website administrators do. The article is quite informative in its own cruel way and unfortunately we are all guilty of something on that list! Here is the one that stood out the most for me:

5. Do all upgrades and extension installations right there on the live site. Who needs a development and testing server? If an installation fails, you’ll just uninstall it again. That will hopefully undo any damage the installation caused.

For a small website, having a development server may be overkill if the information on the website is not critical. In such a case the best thing you could do would just be making backups which could be restored should anything go wrong. If your site isn’t high traffic, a small amount of downtime may go largely unnoticed. Of course, this depends on the type of testing you are doing on your live server. If you are installing tons of extensions, then you should really consider taking the effort to put up a development server and testing it for a few days or weeks before launching the changes on your live site. If you are just making small modifications to a module or installing a reputable component like Community Builder or Joomlaboard, then you shouldn’t have to worry as much. Still, the best practice is to always be as paranoid as possible!

What is a development server you may ask? Basically, a development server is just another copy or your website. If you have installed Apache, PHP and MySQL on your computer, then you will likely be using your own machine as a development server by hosting a local copy of your website on which you first test all changes and extensions. This is the best thing you can do!

Unfortunately, most people running Joomla are not interested in doing all the setup required to run Joomla locally, as many just want a software package they can quickly and easily install on their web-hosting to manage their content and website. If you fall in this boat, you can still set-up a development server. Just install a second copy of Joomla on your web-hosting in an obscure location such that nobody will accidentally fall upon it. Then test your extensions on this second copy of Joomla before installing them on the live version visited by your users. The reason you don’t want anybody to know the URL to the development server is just for extra security, in case you do install an extension which causes a problem or creates an exploit, which could then potentially damage your live site as both are hosted on the same machine.

Most importantly though, take the time to make backups. You may find it to be a hassle, but the day you need your backup, you will be happy its not 4 months old! Don’t count on your web host for backups. While they may be able to help you, the process to retrieve the backup may lead to extended downtime for your website or they may even charge your for the backup!

Update: Have you been making backups? I now have a backup folder on my desktop in order to remind myself to make backups as often as possible. I just took a look inside the folder though and noticed that I haven’t made any new backups in over 3 months!

Time flies. It feels like I made my last backups just a few days ago, but it’s already been months. If I were to lose 3 months worth of information from my website, I would be completely devastated! In fact, I even have a few new websites that have absolutely no backup at all! After the amount of time it took to setup these new sites in the first place, it would be extremely discouraging to have to start over again from the beginning! You never know when there might be a Glitch in the Matrix…