by WebKeyDesign | Feb 16, 2006 | WebKeyDesign
This week I had to sit down and take care of my tax filing for the year and one of the things that I put down is my computer. I sit in front of computers all day long, that at this point, they are like my car. I hardly can see myself living without one. But what I really started thinking about was what would be the best computer for web design, since WebKeyDesign is now a huge part of my life.
MacOS Versus Windows
Without a doubt I am a huge Macintosh proponent. I absolutely love my 15 inch Powerbook and think it is the best computer I have ever used. However not everyone is the same and not everyone wants to make such a big investment. If you are really serious about web design, I am going to recommend that you have both a Macintosh and a Windows PC. If you can swing it, you might also consider a home test server with Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP setup. The linux server will be great to test out new projects before you actually implement them on your hosting server.
For most web design, if you absolutely are going to have one computer, I would recommend a Macintosh. The Powerbook or iBook will give you portability and the ability to do graphics work as well. If most of your web design is code based though, like PHP, Perl, or any other scripting language, I would probably choose a standard PC laptop like a Leveno Thinkpad. Although there are great text editors on the OS X platform, your options on Windows are more and more varied. Portability aside, you could probably do well with a nice desktop. Whatever you decide, make sure your main computer has a large monitor size. Something higher than 1024 is a must for today’s web work.
A Windows PC is what I use to check sites once they are up and running. Even though by now IE 6 is the most hated browser, you still need to check your site on it. There are tons of small utilities that are available on Windows that you can use for web design and maintenance. Yes, I know many of these apps really are bad, but sometimes you find a few that are worth using Windows for.
The Portable Web Server
MacOS X has Apache server already included, but you may find that messing up your main computer is not worth the trouble. If you already have the Windows computer, then you can also use that to run a test setup of Apache. My personal favorite is EasyPHP, which runs as a private server on Windows, only accessible to the local machine user. This is a great way of testing your site’s files before uploading them to your hosting account. If you have a third machine, you could probably run full blown Linux with Apache and have your own web server for testing.
by WebKeyDesign | Feb 13, 2006 | Web Site Basics
Lately I have had many inquiries about Windows Web Hosting, and since I only offer Linux based web hosting to my clients, I felt it necessary to point out a few things when it comes to web hosting and choosing the right host for your web site projects.
Your primary concerns when choosing a web host should be that a web host is reliable and meets the requirements for your web site. This may include having multiple databases, parked domains, or simply having a certain amount of bandwidth. If your site is dependant on Microsoft technologies such as ASP or using data from an Access database, then your hosting requirements can only be met by choosing a Windows web host. Although you may be able to run some of your site on another type of host, it is preferable to use a Windows host, since your site will perform better and there will be less conflicts than if you were to choose a Linux host.
One of the things you may notice about Windows Web Hosting is that there can sometimes be a price difference, with Windows hosting costing as much as double the price of a basic cPanel Linux host. While it is not clear if license costs are the driving force for higher prices, you should consider that the ease of use of Windows and the ability to utilize Microsoft-only technologies do add some cost to Windows web hosting. As a comparison consider Apple’s .Mac services which cost higher than standard web hosting, because Apple is primarily selling its services on ease of use. This is the same situation in the Windows hosting market. The ease of use and ability to run ASP driven sites will cost you extra.
In the Linux hosting market you give up the use of Microsoft technologies, but you get a very reliable and proven solution in Apache + MySQL + PHP. You may also find that Linux hosting packages are more diverse, ranging from small space and bandwidth allotments, to very large gigabyte accounts that even occasional webbloggers can afford. In addition to being less expensive, there are many scripts and third party solutions that are available. You may find more competitively priced packaged solutions than in the Windows market.
Perhaps the difference (other than price) between a Windows host and a Linux host is the technical one. While almost everyone is somewhat familiar with a Windows desktop, not everyone is familiar with Linux and it may take a while for a new webmaster to become comfortable with the differences. However all new webmasters will have to learn about web hosting in general, so this should not deter you in choosing a Linux host over a Windows host. You will find that almost any technical issue with Linux hosting can be resolved by researching it on Google and Yahoo. And if you hire someone to do your site’s maintenance, this may not be a concern at all.
by WebKeyDesign | Feb 3, 2006 | WordPress
My new website MovieComment.com was setup with WordPress 2.0, and so when the 2.0.1 release showed up, I went ahead and upgraded it. Thinking everything went okay, I forgot to check all the plugins, and it appears that WP-Shortstat 1.3 and WordPress 2, no longer work after installing the 2.0.1 update. No new hits are tracked anymore, but you can still view whatever stats you had prior to the upgrade.
The reason is that there is a conflict with the Google Sitemap plugin. HappyArts Blog though has modified WP-Shortstat to work around the problem, and it appears to be working for me now.
HappyArts Blog is a German blog, so you might want to have Google translate HappyArts Blog for you.
Update: HappyArts Blog has incorporated my CSS changes into his version of WP-Shortat. There is also a download page in English.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 31, 2006 | WebKeyDesign
I was browsing the web as usual this week, when I read that A List Apart is taking responses on what you love or hate about the web right now. Without a doubt, the most annoying trend on the world wide web, is the number of junk sites. At least an hour or two of my day is devoted to technical problems, and the web is my number one resource for technical solutions. Google and Yahoo are my default search tools but more and more searches are turning up sites that list partial RSS feeds for other sites. Each of these sites takes at least five minutes of my time to assess and see if they actually have anything of value, so the more sites I find coming up, the more time I waste. In some cases, I am completely given up, and tried other search terms to see if I can hit a real site instead. All this work reduces productivity and makes the web useless to me. In the past most scrapper sites would get their content the hard way, they would scrape other sites using Perl scripts. These sites were plentiful, but they never ranked very well on search engines, and so their existence did not really bother me. Eventually RSS came along and tons of blogs would syndicate their content. This made it easier for webmasters to put together a site made completely of RSS feeds from legitimate sites. The end result was a tide of splogs and scrapper sites that now rank very well in search engines and clog most search results.
Some would argue that the reason why all these splogs exist is that they are financed by online ads that make splogs a good business to be in, and I really cannot argue with that, but what matters to me is that like most other Internet related problems, no one party is responsible. The search engines are hesitant to not rank these sites well, which leads one to wonder if this conflicts with their own advertising business. Then there are the sploggers themselves that have taken it upon themselves to abuse the ideal of the blog. Their chief argument being that Google does something similar with Google News, why can’t they? All of this leads us to the current state of the web, namely RSS pollution has made internet searching a less effective resource for all of us.
by WebKeyDesign | Jan 26, 2006 | Site Design
Most of the questions that I get from WebKeyDesign vistors have to do with upgrading or making modifications to current web sites. Perhaps you need to add a banner advertisement or image gallery, but in some instances the current site has been designed in WYSIWYG programs like Frontpage and Dreamweaver. These sites usually have a few things in common: they were designed back in 2001, look dated by today’s popular weblog sites, and do not rank very well on search engines.
Update Outdated HTML to XHTML
The best improvements for a typical site like this is to update the HTML code itself to XHTML. Transitional XHTML is a good target to aim for, but if you find that HTML 4 is still something you rather stick with, then the very least you can do is add a proper DOCTYPE and utilize CSS Stylesheets to clean up your HTML and make it easier for search engines to index your site.
To learn more about XHTML, I recommend Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards, which is a good introduction to what web standards are and how to begin to utilize XHTML.
Since the content does not need to be changed, just the code, make sure that for each page of content that you have proper meta tags filled out. The most important ones being the Title, Keywords, Description, and the Robots indexing meta tag. This will insure that the search engines have something to help them figure out what your content is about.
Web Site Marketing
Once your code is updated, the search engines will find it easier to index your site, but one of your other goals should be gaining a bigger audience of visitors. A short marketing campaign can help with the popularity issue. The first step is to advertise your site in three different ways. Sure you can advertise more, but you may not have the time to invest in a prolonged campaign.
The first thing to do is a word of mouth campaign. Just remind friends and people you meet that you have this cool web site and that they should visit it because such and such reasons. A good way of helping people remember your site is the old business card. Just have business cards with your web site address and slogan. Pass these cards out to your waiter, to your friends, to the guy waiting for his wife at the mall.
Small print publications are a great choice for web sites, if the publications fit your market. Try a couple of small advertisements and see if it draws anymore traffic than usual.
Next you need to market your site online. Consider buying an advertisement on another website, or possibly running a short term Adwords campaign.
As you market your site, make sure you monitor your stats. You want to have some way of monitoring your efforts to see what worked and what did not work. This will help you decide in the future what type of marketing is most appropiate to your site. You may find out that the most unlikely source of traffic may be free via search engines. Find out what is working and then add new content to your site based on what is driving traffic to your site. The important thing is that you need to keep monitoring your results and eventually you will have a more successful site without having to completely redo everything.
