Posted by admin on Mar 2, 2009 in
System Integration 
Microsoft has announced that the latest version of Windows, due in the next couple of years, will be called – drumroll please – Windows 7. It’s about time Microsoft adopted a naming system that might actually make some sense to users, but I can’t wait for hordes of customers to start asking if they somehow missed Windows 1 through 6.
Windows has had one of the most ridiculous naming schemes in the history of software. First there were logical (but ugly) version numbers, like the once commonplace “Windows 3.1?. Then with the release of the overhauled Windows 95 the company adopted a naming system based on the year of release, which it continued until Windows 98.
Windows Me (perhaps the worst operating system I’ve ever used), sacrificed the scheme for a chance to be clever (it stood for “me” and the millennium at the same time!) Next up we hit Windows XP, which has served most of us reasonably well since 2001. It sounds sort of cool, it’s catchy, and we have no idea what it means. Fine.
Finally we had Windows Vista, which seemed to stick with the naming convention of “something that sounds sort of cool but didn’t really mean anything”. It had been more than five years since the release of XP, so there was little chance of confusion.
Microsoft is now in a hurry to push out its next operating system after the generally dismal response to Vista. And so we’ve come to Windows 7, which is apparently tied to the build numbers and not the actual releases. The new naming scheme lends itself well to faster, more incremental releases similar to what we’ve seen from Apple (about once every 18 months), but it’s probably going to confuse everyone and couldn’t be more bland.
Tags: Microsoft, System Integration
An excellent CSS tutorial which outlines all you need as the framework for any fixed-width 3 column website. It provides the XHTML and CSS for the layout and will explain each section of the code throughout the tutorial. This article is aimed at the beginner web designer who wants to create an accessible website, learn about how it all works and why.
Feel free to download the files and use them to start building your own website. Please note this is intended as a starting place for your design and not a ready-template, you will need to add in your headings, images and other content.
Tags: accessibility, Application Maintenance, css, Flash Based Website, SEO Traffic Services, stylesheets, tableless design, Technical Outsourcing, web design, Web Maintenance, Website Maintenance, xhtml, XML Website
Posted by admin on Jan 9, 2009 in
SEO,
System Integration,
Website Design Google have published their own SEO starter guide (PDF 550KB) which covers the basics of search engine optimization as it relates to the Google search engine.
If you’re reasonable familiar with SEO there’s not really anything new here.
However, if you’re trying to educate a client or an internal stakeholder on this topic it’s helpful to reference a document that is sanctioned by the world’s largest search engine.
Tags: SEO, SEO for Website, Website Design and Development
If you’re running a web site you need to know how it is doing, in particular how you’re performing against your competitors, and where you can improve.
These useful tools will help you to monitor and (hopefully) improve the performance of your site according to generally recognized web site marketing criteria.
SEOmoz Trifecta Page Strength Tool
If you would like to measure the strength of a certain page on a site, blog, or an entire domain, then check out the SEOmoz Trifecta Page Strength Tool(free registration required).
Based on various factors you will see your impact within your industry and can compare it to others. Note that free accounts are limited to one report per day.
Popuri
If you think it’s a lot of hassle to use several different tools Popuri might be what you’re looking for.
Popuri allows you to get a variety of information — from PageRank to del.icio.us bookmarks — all at once. It also includes Compete rank which provides a useful counterpoint to Alexa in order to get a better picture of how your site ranks in popularity.
Raven SEO Analyzer
The free Raven SEO Analyzer aims to help you build a better, more optimized website to rank you higher on search engines.
It checks things like whether your site uses heading tags properly, has deprecated HTML, contains inline styles, and has an acceptable page weight.
It also scores you out of 100 which is helpful if you’re monitoring the performance of your site over time or comparing against competitors.
Mint
Mint is a web analytics tool somewhat similar to Google Analytics. It provides all the usual statistics on everything from number of visits to unique referrers.
Unlike Google Analytics and other web analytics packages, it also tracks RSSfeeds, browser window size, and has a library of official and community-developed plugins.
Website Grader
If you’re looking to analyze the marketing effectiveness of your web site, tryWebsite Grader.
It provides you with a score out of 100 based on criteria such as web site traffic, SEO, social popularity and various other technical factors. It also provides you with advice on how you can improve your ranking.
One useful feature is the ability to compare your site against multiple other websites. This could be really helpful in better understanding how your site stacks up against its competitors.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a tool that supplements your standard analytics package. It comes in 3 versions — standard (free), plus and pro — depending on how many visits and pages you want to track at once.
Crazy Egg lets you track what visitors are doing on particular page and shows you what links they clicked via heatmaps and various overlays. It’s a great way to test the effectiveness of different versions of a page to see which one is the most effective.
SiteYogi
SiteYogi sets out to be a one-stop-shop for web site analysis.
It examines a variety of areas, including how well optimized your site is for search engines as well as the number of backlinks you have, various social media rankings, whether your code is valid, and how well ranked your site is. It provides quite a comprehensive overview.
Smart PageRank
Smart PageRank provides you with a lot more data about your site than the name suggests.
Like some of the other tools mentioned, it provides you with a variety of data about your site and its ranking on various search engines. Unlike other tools, it estimates a dollar value for your site based on these factors.
SEOCentro
Looking for a variety of SEO-related tools all in one place? Then SEOCentro is worth a look.
It includes tools that will check meta tags, pagerank, links popularity, keyword position, and search engine saturation. It also provides a server headers checking tool, which is useful to make sure that any 301 redirects are set up correctly.
Tags: Technology, Website Design Help, Website Tips
Most of the sites I’ve managed have used content management systems that spit out static pages.
As such, I’m become a proponent of using server side includes (SSI) as a way to manage global site components, due to their simplicity and ease-of-use.
Nothing frustrates me more than when I’m told that a simple, global change to a static web site — such as changing the copyright year — is a major update because of all the pages that will need to be touched.
“Why don’t you have these types of global elements, such as footers, set up as includes?” I often wonder to myself.
More recently however, I’ve been told that they are not an appropriate technique for managing high-traffic static sites due to the additional load they place on the server.
I’ve also been told that they are simply a little out-of-date and that web teams have moved on to other methods for managing the types of issues that arise with the use of static web pages (for example, client-side JavaScript).
I’m not an overly technical person and so if a developer tells me that SSI are not the right way to go, I don’t have a lot of ammunition with which to say otherwise.
So, my question is: are SSI an appropriate way to manage global parts of highly-trafficked static pages or have they gone the way of the splash page? Thanks for any wisdom anyone can impart.
Tags: E-Commerce Site, Security, Website Design, Website Maintenance
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