Web Dev Notes

It’s time for the second ever WebDev Top 11! For those frequent visitors out there, you all probably remember what an exciting moment it was back on July 3 when I released the First Ever Top 11. At that time, this site was rolling off the steam of the popular, “Are Your Archives Burying You Worse Than Digg” article which discussed the importance of making it easier to help your visitors find your best articles! Sometimes even those old, dust-covered posts are still worth reading! Following my own advice, I created the WebDev Top 11!

This update is particularly exciting because the list has been shaken up! That’s right, this website is rockin’ and totally unstable so the Top 11 has almost completely changed! It is therefore my duty to give you an updated list to make sure we keep the roof on fire. As usual, all inappropriate metaphors for a web development website!

Anyways, enough suspense building; I give you the Web Dev Top 11!!!

1. Introducing phpBB - While the majority of the list has changed, the most popular post of all remains king of the hill for a second time! This post provides a quick introduction to the very popular phpBB forum system which is open source and free! Never underestimate the power of the simple informative post, this bad-boy has been brining in loads of traffic for a few months now!

2. Learning PHP - You would think that the Top 11 posts would tend to be the newer articles since I am using my monthly stats to determine the current most popular Web Dev destinations. Well, that’s totally wrong and clearly demonstrates the importance of writing good content to build up for the future of your website! The two top posts are among the oldest articles I have written! This particular one is another simple, informative post which simply introduces the PHP programming language. It was not part of the last Top 11 and I have not linked to it since, yet search engines must be beginning to like it as it has climbed up to #2 on this edition of the Web Dev Top 11!

3. Turn your phpBB Forum into a Blog - Climbing up two spots from #5 to #3, this article introduces software which can be used to allow you to blog using the popular phpBB forum system. This is once again an older post which is continuing to rack up traffic. The great thing about writing these Web Dev Top 11 posts are the fact that you start to realize which content is working best…! The three top posts all mention phpBB and PHP which suggests I should consider writing some more articles on the subject!

4. What’s Your Favorite Marketing Strategy - Don’t let anybody tell you weekend posts don’t work! This Saturday morning question got the brain gears turning away and went on to spawn other posts such as, “How to Generate One Million Incoming Links” and the follow-up, “What’s Your Favorite Marketing Strategy Part 1“.

5. Are There Advantages to Weekend Blogging - Inspired by Lynn Little, this post was all about exploring the possible advantages of weekend blogging. The post got a big traffic boost when we later presented the Huge Advantages of Weekend Blogging which revealed our website traffic statistics after testing weekend blogging for the first time! As you can imagine, we’ve been posting every weekend since!

6. Why are People Using Technorati Tags on Their Blog - I assume this post generated a lot of buzz since most new bloggers are generally clueless about how and why to use Technorati, but are very curious about it since they see the tags on all of the most popular blogs they visit! I personally did not see the advantage to using the tags until I did the research for this post since all the tags seemed to do were link to Technorati!

7. How to Manage all Your Email Accounts with Gmail - Thank you z-oc and Lifehacker! Through Lifehacker I found the very useful article by z-oc which described managing multiple email accounts through Gmail. I decided to feature this article and immediately it began picking up traffic!

8. How to Start That Big Development Project - About to begin that big development project? Then this article is for you since it describes where you should begin. It’s important to discover exactly what needs to be developed before you develop it, so start by collecting information so you can answer, “Are You Building the Right Product?”

9. Formatting Text in Wordpress - Dropping from #2 to #9, this article which explains how to indent or include code in your blog posts continues to hang in the Web Dev Top 11!

10. Rank Better - Renew Your Domains for Longer Periods - This article definitely grabbed the attention of those curious SEO folks who are always looking for better way to optimize their website! Does Google favor websites which have been registered for multiple years? Google patents suggest that this is the case…!

11. Top Ten Stupidest Joomla! Administrator Tricks - Holy smokes, here comes a blast from the past! This post written back in April has suddenly started to pick up momentum! The article links to a list of dumb things Joomla website administrators tend to do and then discusses the one I like to do, which is upgrades or testing on a live server! Oops