Site Meter Web Dev Notes

How to insert CSS on your Website

by

There are three different ways you can include CSS on your website.

  1. Link to a .CSS file
  2. Write the CSS between the head elements of your web page
  3. Mix the CSS with the HTML by using the style attribute of the HTML tags

1 - Link to a .CSS file

<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
   href="cssFileName.css" />
</head>

2 - Write the CSS between the head elements of your web page

<head>
<style type="text/css">
   body {background-color: blue}
   h1 {color:white; font-size:12pt}
   p {margin-left: 10px}
</style>
</head>

3 - Mix the CSS with the HTML by using the style attribute of the HTML tags

<p style="margin-left: 10px">
   This paragraph will have a 10 pixel margin on the left!
</p>

Always test the results of changes to your CSS in as many browsers as you can! I find I get the least frustrated when I get the CSS working as desired in Firefox first, then test to see if it works in Internet Exlporer. Often it will! However, when I get my CSS to work with Internet Explorer first, it rarely works in Firefox upon testing!

Posted in CSS on March 28th, 2008

1 Comment Link to this Entry

Web Developers Working with SSH

by

If you are a web developer, chances are you’ve had the fun experience of using SSH in order to manage the server that is hosting your website. In fact, for most web servers, Linux is still the operating system of choice and SSH is the management tool used to interact with the operating system remotely. This often means learning a whole slew of old-school commands in order to get the system to do what you want.

Using SSH can be quite a daunting task for people who have grown up in the Windows era and who are not used to controlling a system via text-commands! In fact, many web developers will at first simply stick to using FTP for uploading/downloading files. However, if you go deeper into web development, you will want more control of your server and need to use SSH.

Certified for Windows Vista

But… what if you are managing your own web server and want to set it up to allow SSH connections? What if you are running your website off of a Windows server because you are using .NET to create ASP pages? Is it still possible to connect remotely using SSH? It is indeed possible using Pragma Systems SSH Telnet Server. Using their software you can easily remotely control your system and it’s applications. Best of all, it works on Windows Vista as well as XP and other Windows operating systems.

Pragma Systems SSH technology is used in the majority of Fortune 500 companies in the United States and in over 2100 companies world-wide. Their software is secure, fast and reliable. Their SSH server supports up to 1000 simultaneous connections which is more than enough for almost any company. Also, their technology is significantly easier to use than standard text only SSH tools as they have a much easier to use and navigate interface which can be seen via the screenshots on this page.

This post brought to you by Pragma Systems. You can find more information about Pragma Systems and their products at Pragmasys.com. For more information about web servers, check out the Web Dev Notes web server section!

Posted in General on March 27th, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

Validate your Website for Better SEO

by

World Wide Web Consortium

The first step to Search Engine Optimization is making sure all the creepy crawlers can actually find their way around your website. Lets say I plan to take a trip to China to crawl (ie: visit) a certain part of the country. When I show up I’ll need directions, but unfortunately, even if I find a kind fellow happy to assist me, if he speaks to me in Mandarin, I won’t understand anything and I’ll be lost!

You can do all the optimization you like, but if you confuse poor Googlebot, he’ll turn around and go visit someone else! You need to welcome Googlebot and friends with open arms and feed them all the instructions they need to easily find all the destinations on your site. Sitemaps are great, but we’ll talk about those another day. Flash websites for example can be beautiful, but crawlers hit Flash like a bird into a freshly cleaned patio door. While they’ll stop at your site knocked out for a moment, they’ll quickly realize they can’t go forward, turn around a fly away!

Knocking out Googlebot is a bad idea if you want to increase traffic to your website. While crawlers can handle indexing poorly coded websites, the best thing you can do is validate your site “just in case”. Validating your website will help you find errors in your HTML or CSS that you likely don’t know are there and which are usually very easy fixes. Fix these up and make your site more inviting to the crawlers!

Also, definitely find broken links and fix them ASAP! Don’t upset those poor crawlers by sending them looking for pages that don’t exist! That’s just cruel don’t you think? :)

Posted in General, Marketing, SEO on March 27th, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

Get Published using AuthorHouse

by

AuthorHouse

Have you ever thought of publishing your own book? Selling millions of copies of your very own book is probably just as exciting as the thought of getting Stumbled and experiencing a huge traffic surge to your website. In fact, it’s probably even a better feeling! Besides, who is more qualified to have their very own book than an experienced blogger who knows his/her niche well and who has plenty of worthy advice to share!

AuthorHouse Book Publishing is a self-publishing service that could help you get your very first book published. By using AuthorHouse, you’ll be working with professionals who are serious about both writing and publishing and who will be able to help you with all aspects of the process.

What does AuthorHouse do exactly?

AuthorHouse unfortunately will not write your book for you, but that’s about the only step you will have to take care of all on your own. Once done writing your book, AuthorHouse can have an editor review your content or you can take advantage of their illustrations package and have their artists find artwork for your book.

When it comes to actually publishing your book, AuthorHouse will have tons of options available to you such as the format, size and cover for your book. You can also choose to have a hardcover or paperback, color or black and white, etc… Basically, anything you would expect a publishing company to do, you will have the power to do while working with AuthorHouse.

Lastly, you will also have the additional option to select a promotional or book selling service in order to help increase sales of your book. This is an option that may or may not be useful to you depending on your personal goals and reasons for publishing a book.

All in all, if you are interested in getting published, self-publishing is a more and more popular way to do so. Definitely check out AuthorHouse and the services they have to offer to see if they are providing just what you are looking for!

This Post Brought to you by AuthorHouse! If you are interested in self-publishing but are not sure if AuthorHouse is for you, compare them with one of their biggest competitors Lulu.com! You’ll then be able to decide which service is best for your particular needs.

Posted in General, Make Money on March 26th, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

Plant the Seeds for Success Early

by

Do you want your blog to be a success or a failure? In order to be successful you MUST have quality content. Forget about quantity of posts and focus on quality. Plant the seeds for success early.

128296973507657500iizplantinbu.jpg

In order for your blog to take-off, you need some very high quality posts you can use as your foundation. Take the time to write these posts and then link to them often in the future. Help use them to propel you forward.

Of course, while those old cornerstone posts will help get your blog rolling and will be excellent at grabbing the attention of first time visitors, you won’t be able to grow unless you also hang on to your returning visitors. Even if you plant the seeds for success, your plant won’t grow unless you water it and put it somewhere where it can get sun.

Speaking about getting sun, don’t expect your blog to magically grow on its own! Your plant doesn’t have legs… If you leave it in the shade, it won’t get up and walk over to the sun. Your blog won’t get up and show itself on peoples screens either. You’ll need to get out there and market your content in order to attract some attention. Post comments on blogs with similar topics and hope that other authors and bloggers start sending you some links! If you have great content, the links will come!

For more tips about marketing and advertising your blog, check out the Web Dev Notes Marketing Section.

Looking for Web Development Software or Books? Visit my Web Development Software and Books Store!

Want to Increase your Websites Page Rank and Incoming Traffic? Submit your Articles to WriterDatabase.com. It’s Free!

Posted in Blogging Tips, Marketing, WebDev LOL on March 26th, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

How to Increase Links to your Website

by

WriterDatabase.com

The more links you have to your website, the more visitors you get! That’s a pretty simple concept to understand. Every link to your site on the web is another chance that someone will find your website. Even more important is the fact that the number of links to your website also helps your site gain a higher ranking in search engine results. Since most people use search engines to find anything online, the better you rank, the more traffic you will get! Search engines are an excellent form of free advertising for your website so it is crucial that you do not upset them if you wish to give yourself a competitive advantage over websites similar to your own.

There are many ways to build links. If you’re blogging, the best way is simply to interact with other websites by posting comments on theirs.

Another excellent way to build links to your website is through article submission. If you have a good website, you will already have tons of articles sitting around in your archives. Every now and then, submit one of these articles to an article directory like Writer Database.The reason for doing this is because at the bottom of your article, you can place a resource box which will link to your website as the source of the article. Therefore, if your article is approved, you will suddenly have generated a new link to your site. You can read more about the Writer Database website here.

Don’t just submit to a single directory. If you have time, try submitting to multiple directories to further increase the amount of links to your web site. The more you have, the better!

What about the Google penalty for duplicate content? If you submit an article identical to the one on your website, will the penalty outweigh the benefits? I’ve seen many discussions on the matter and the fact remains that nobody really knows the algorithms Google uses to rank pages. Many people believe that the duplicate content penalty will only affect duplicate content on the same domain. I have in fact seen this happen on my BattleCity Classic website which uses the Joomla Content management system. Due to the way the system is set-up, several different links could allow me to reach the exact same page. For this reason, my main landing page had a low page-rank of 1 for a long-time, until I fixed this problem. A few months later, after the next page rank update, my landing page jumped to a page rank of 4. During this time, I’ve seen the page rank of most article directories remain stable or even increase and so it would seem that the duplicate content penalty is meant to protect against a single website spamming Google’s index.

If you are however worried about duplicate content penalties, then take the time to write new articles ONLY for article directories. Do not place this content on your website, but instead use it in as many article directories as you can in order to advertise your site via the quality of the writing and of course through the generation of incoming links!

Posted in Blogging Tips, Web Development on March 25th, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

The Pesticide Paradox

by

Pesticide

We have all heard of insect resistance to pesticides at one point or another. When pesticides are used to kill insects, those that are the most resistant to the pesticide are those which manage to survive, at least long enough to reproduce. This means, that the next generation of insects are more likely to be resistant to pesticides because they will have inherited resistance from their parents. Over time, the most resistant insects will continually survive and reproduce until eventually the entire population will be resistant.

Similarly with software development, a system will tend to build resistance against a particular testing technique.

What the heck am I talking about? Bugs of course! If you are the manager of a team of developers, and these developers know the testing techniques that will be used to find bugs in the code they develop, then these programmers will quickly learn to avoid creating such bugs to avoid being the one responsible for faults in the system.

While this may seem like a good thing, it could be problematic because testing will now suddenly stop finding bugs! If those working on the software forget that testing cannot prove the absence of bugs, they may then believe that their system is of higher quality than it really is.

Human error is inevitable, and if the programmers know the testing technique because it is always the same one used, what will happen is that the code will be written in a different way such that the bugs are displaced to different areas, but not eliminated. This of course it not intentional, but while focusing on eliminating one type of bug that they know will be found, other bugs will be created.

Most developers know, we rarely fix one bug without creating a few others to replace it! In large systems, bugs can often be difficult to detect, so change your testing technique from time to time to ensure that you release higher quality software.

Posted in Design, Web Development on March 24th, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

Stand Out From the Crowd

by

Remember when I said, “If You Clone You Will End Up Alone“? I wasn’t kidding! All too often I see new bloggers trying to copy another successful blogger in order to fast-track themselves to success! This is the worst thing you could ever do of all the horrible things you could ever imagine yourself doing!!! Why on earth would anyone ever read your new website if it sounds exactly like an existing well established site? They won’t!

It would be nice if humans were little lemmings who would march around the blogosphere and just magically show up by the thousands every day! Unfortunately there are no lemmings coming! Ok, thats a lie, you are the lemming and you are about to walk your website right off a cliff if you copy someone else or even worse steal content!

If you want visitors to take your website seriously, you need to stand out from the rest of the crowd!

iz will takes the ring

How do you do that? The best way you can make sure you stand out is by NOT TRYING TO DO SO! Stop trying so hard to make your website an instant success. Accept the fact that there are no shortcuts and quality content is the key to prosperity! What about the standing out part? Just be yourself! Don’t try to be someone you aren’t. Every single person on this planet is unique so as long as you are yourself, you are bound to stand out.

A great example is Brandon from GamingMMO.com. The first thing you will notice is that he is passionate about his subject as well as knowledgeable. Once you have those two ingredients, all you have to do is let the fingers do the typing!

Posted in Blogging Tips on March 23rd, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

Learn How To Fit 67 Articles Inside One

by

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.

128298538306407500iminursoxst.jpg

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 ;)

Posted in Blogging Tips, Browsers, CSS, Design, General, HTML, JavaScript, Joomla, Make Money, Marketing, MySQL, PHP, PHP-Nuke, Questions, SEO, Software, Top 11 Posts, Web Development, Web Servers, WebDev LOL, WebDev Links, WebDev Store, Wordpress, phpBB on March 22nd, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

Take the World By Storm… Bit by Bit

by

Marketing is a big part of achieving success in any domain. If you want your website to become more popular you will need to plan your strategy attack in order to take the world by storm. So… where to begin?

lolcat - HE SUSPECTSÂ NOTHING
more funny pictures

It’s never too early to market your website, however, before undertaking a significantly large marketing campaign it would first be a good idea to make sure you have a product worth marketing. The majority of the readers of this website are individuals looking for advice in order to make their own personal blog more popular such that it can eventually return a profit. If you find yourself in this position then before launching a huge marketing campaign make sure you have quality posts ready on your website. Make sure you have a good landing page and then make sure your best content can be easily found from this page. This will greatly increase the chance of a visitor subscribing to your RSS feed or adding your website to their favorites.

If you want to take the world by storm, you’ll need to invest some money into advertising programs such as Google Adwords. These types of programs will allow you to place your advertisement on web pages throughout the internet. Clicks will also be of higher quality with a program like Google Adwords because your ad will be shown in contextually relevant places which would imply that generally the user viewing the add has interest in the subject.

If you don’t have money to invest, there are ways to get visitors to your website for free. While it’s nice to invest a chunk of change and see your website take off instantly, it’s just as rewarding to build your site from the ground-up bit by bit. You can’t always rush success in life, sometimes you’ll need to earn it ;)

If you read any website providing marketing tips related to blogging you’ll see the same advice repeated time and time again. JOIN DISCUSSIONS. It really is that simple and even after reading it over and over again most people won’t do it. Join a forum, but don’t advertise your website with a new post. This will only result in your post being deleted and marked as spam! What you should do is simply add your link to your signature then join in the discussions. The more helpful you are to other users of the forum the more likely you are to receive clicks to your website. Also take the time to comment on blogs related to yours. Do not see these people as the enemy or as competitors, see them as friends and post meaningful comments. These people will not only then visit your site, but may possibly also post a link to your site on theirs which could send your lots of traffic and help build up the page rank of your site!

Take the time to help others and in-time you will enjoy the rewards of being a good person. Spamming can get you traffic spikes, but in the end you will not have gained much if the visitor never returns again. Don’t be afraid to take the world by storm… bit by bit!

Posted in Adwords, Blogging Tips, Marketing on March 21st, 2008

No Comments Link to this Entry

About Web Dev Notes

Your one stop destination for anything and everything related to web development

Web Dev Notes Author(s)

NAVIGATE

LINKS

CATEGORIES

TOP COMMENTERS

RECENT COMMENTS

SUBSCRIBE

ARCHIVES

Blogging Flair

 

New Media, Web 2.0 Channel Posts

  • 10 Ways to Make Sure Your SEO Goes Out of Its Way for You
    If they want to have success, companies should do everything they can to ensure that their SEO firm doesn't provide lousy service. Here are 10 tips to keep in mind: 1. Be realistic. Don't waste your [...]
  • Podcasting Transcription
    A Guest Post from Tishia Lee of Tishia Saves Time: When I first started offering transcription services as part of my Virtual Assistant business, transcribing podcasts was not something I [...]
  • Don't Dabble - Make A Commitment
    If you want to get the best bang for your buck, plan on podcasting for the long haul. Podcasters who “test” things out with one or two podcasts and then give up may think that they've given [...]
  • A Question of Podcasting Frequency
    This follows up on yesterday's post about not dabbling in podcasting but rather to make a commitment. Podcasting on a schedule is important when building a community and an audience. Don’t have [...]
  • Do You Twitter About Your Podcast?
    Whenever I release a new episode of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio is pop the link up on my Twitter and invite my followers to come check it out. This has brought me several first time listeners which [...]
  • Looking for Podcast Outsourcing?
    I mentioned having my podcast audio's transcribed in my last post. In case you wonder - no, I do not transcribe them myself. (Shudder the thought - I did enough transcription to last a lifetime in [...]
  • Business Podcasting Benefit: Be An Industry Thought Leader
    I often ask people 'Why haven't you started your podcast yet?' and a common reply is 'I don't feel like I'm enough of an expert to cover the topic I'm interested in.' Enough of an expert? [...]
  • Business Podcasting Benefit: More Content
    Building a business on the web requires that you generate a lot of content. Content on your website draws traffic both through search engines (people searching for your content) and through links [...]
  • Business Podcasting Benefit: Deeper Relationships
    A website visitor is just a website visitor. You can't really say that you have a relationship with someone who has only visited your website can you? But when the web visitor subscribes to [...]
  • Business Podcasting Benefit: Increased Market Exposure
    When you consider how many millions of people are walking around with iPods and other Mp3 players you have to wonder, wouldn't it be awesome if they came looking for you? Well they do. Ipod [...]

 

Hot Off The Press