Simple PHP Blog

I have already done a lot of ranting and raving about Blogger and Wordpress.

Although I consider these two to be the leaders of the blogging pack (by a large margin), I did run across a blog using Simple PHP Blog, and was impressed. It doesn't have all the crazy features like the other two, but it does have a feature which really attracted my attention. On the bottom of every post there are five dots, and you can rate the post 1 to 5. This way, people can interact with your posts and website without actually having to write a comment.

Don't get me wrong, the comment function is still intact, but the percent of comments compared to visitors is tiny, while the percent of "ratings" to visitors is much higher.

Another note: Simple PHP Blog isn't database driven. You can run it on a server without needing a database!

If anyone ends up using this system, please let me know how it goes.
-Ashton Sanders

Website Up Time Checker

I have a couple websites that I need to make sure is always up and running. And I've found that using Site Up Time.com is a great way to do it.

For absolutely free, Site Up Time will check your website every 30 minutes, and email you if it is down!

Sounds like a deal to me,
-Ashton Sanders

Liberty Names of America

Liberty Names of America

is yet another great example of Jerks trying to get a lot of money for nothing.

My wife has a website for her horse business called TopPriorityTrakehners.com. (Trakehner is a breed of horse.) We have this domain registered with 1&1 for $7/year.

Today, I got a letter in the mail from Liberty Names of America saying that my domain was coming up for renewal, and by filling out this form and paying $29/year, I could renew my domain name with Liberty Names of America! what a great deal! I can also get the .org and .net variants of my domain for the same unbelievable price of $29/year!

ARE YOU SERIOUS?

What jerk thought this up? Emailing people and telling them to renew for ridiculous amounts of money. The worst part is that they make the letter look like just a friendly reminder to renew your domain... when actually they are trying to get you to transfer your domain to Liberty Names of America and pay four times the price of 1and1.

And of course they have to have the patriotic name "Liberty Names of America" because they are trying to fulfill the American dream by taking everyone else's money. It just makes me sick: all of the low-life jerks who try to come up with these schemes to trick people into giving them lots of money for literally nothing in exchange.

"Everybody's trying to get filthy rich off of someone else's money." -Big and Rich (Filthy Rich)

I hope this page comes up in Google for "Liberty Names of America" and no one every pays them a dime.
-Ashton Sanders

SEO - Where to Host Your Blog?

I know that a blog can really help to increase your website content. A blog shows the Search Engines that there is actually someone behind this website, and they actually care about their website.

When I started this blog at the beginning of this year, I was trying to research whether it was better to have two medium-content heavy sites that link to each other, or one site with all of the content.

The Setup

My main Website Design Website is Websites in a Flash. This site has 20-30 pages of content, and got approximately 400 unique visitors a month. (This is primarily from Search Engines.)

I knew that this blog would have many pages of website-terms, so I decided to host it on my Ashton Sanders website as a subdomain. The purpose of this was to see if two medium sized sites linking to each other would create an increase in unique visitors for both my Main Website and my Blog.

Results

Obviously, my Blog had an increase in visitors (because it didn't have any before). Surprisingly, it has totally surpassed my normal website, although I guess it shouldn't be surprising.

My Websites in a Flash website increased to about 650 Unique visitors. It also finally got back to PR4, but I'm not satisfied with that product. So, I've moved my blog to my Websites in a Flash Site, 301 redirects and all. I will now be testing my statistics/results on this new server, and will give you another update after 4 or 5 more months.

My findings, so far, from this test lead me to believe that it is best to have your blog on the same domain as your main website, but a final verdict will come in early 2008.

Note: After this Search Engine Optimization test, the only thing I have to test for myself if whether a blog on your website is better as a subfolder or subdomain.

-Testing the Bounds of the Internet
-Ashton Sanders

Ron Paul and the Internet

It doesn't take a genius to tell that if Ron Paul becomes president, he'll put a lot of powerful people out of power. He's going to close down some very deep-rooted parts of the government.

It doesn't take much to figure out that those powerful people are going to do as much as they can to stay in power. Unfortunately for them, no one controls the Internet. The Internet allows people to spread their beliefs without a secret agenda getting in the way.

The fact that some random guy put together a website called www.ThisNovember5th.com and because of it, ended up raising over 4 million dollars for Ron Paul in one day!

The Internet is an amazing and powerful tool.
-Ashton Sanders

Programming on Principle

There are many different ways to program websites. There a many different ways to program the exact same website. If you gave the same design to 100 different website developers, you would end up with 100 pages (that probably all looked fairly similar) and 100 completely different HTML code. Is it possible to say if one is right or wrong?

The Principle of Web Programming

The first principle of website programming is validating. When you make a website, it better be 100% valid. "Ah but it looks perfect in Internet Explorer..." (but it probably looks horrible in Firefox or Opera.) If your code is not valid, that means you are "doing it wrong." Only second rate Web Developers are okay with "doing it wrong."

With HTML, you can do just about anything! From anything as simple as changing the color of a body of text, to aligning tables around your site. But just because you can doesn't mean you should. HTML is not a styling language, its a formatting language. You should use HTML to enter and position your text and body copy.

Cascading Style Sheets, CSS, is a styling language. It's purpose it to add color and life to your website. If you remove your CSS from your site, it should end up being straight text with a couple pictures.

By Why Use CSS?

CSS makes life simple! Why else? Every website has certain aspects that will be the same throughout. Take headers for example: On any given website, it will have the same color, font, size, etc for the first title on every page. You could hard program that with HTML on every page, or you could just put it between "<h1>" tags, and then in your CSS document, you tell all h1's to be a certain size, color, font, etc., etc., etc.

Then when the client comes back and says, "Sorry man, I don't like that green, lets add 2 points of magenta to it," you don't have to reprogram your entire site. All you need to do is change 6 digits in one document, and the entire site changes!

And if that wasn't enough, it keeps your website code clean! I took a site that was almost 300 lines of code (where everything was programmed in HTML). I converted most of it to CSS, and it ended up being less that 40 lines of code! Search Engines love you! It is just that much easier for the Search Engines to get the text on your site.

"Program like your client is watching you... and they understand what you're doing."
-Ashton Sanders

Search Engine Optimization vs Website Design

Earlier I wrote a post about the Basics of Search Engine Optimization.

In this post I'll be delving a little deeper into the basic principles that are used to create the basic rules of Search Engine Optimization.

Text is King I mentioned earlier how Search Engines can only index text. They can't see pictures, movies, music, etc. Pictures can become a very easy substitute for text if you are not careful. Many clients want that button to have a unique font with a nice shadow, which is totally fine... but not as good as having straight text.

So there is definitely a balance between Design and Search Engine Optimization. You want your site to be aesthetic enough for visitors to not be repelled, but you don't want it so picture heavy that no one finds your site as the search engines can't tell what your site is about.

"But you can add alternate text (alt attribute) to your images!"

Yes you can add alts, so that if you image doesn't load, you can have text appear in its place... but search engines know that there is really no way for visitors to see that text. So alt text will never have as much power as straight text or a "h1".

On the other hand, if your site is entirely text, with no images, you won't ever create a conversion. Images are needed to add live and personality and style to a website.

The Balance of Search Engine Optimization and Website Design.
-Ashton Sanders

Firefox - Banner Blocker!

If you still are using Internet Explorer, let me share with you the best internet browser, bar none:

Firefox

There you have it, go get it. More secured browsing, and more capabilities. For example:

Have you noticed how ANNOYING the banner ads have been getting? They are freaking annoying. Like those "true" commercials on myspace... annoying. Well have no fear, Firefox is here with the sweetest extension ever!

AdBlock Plus

With this extension, just about all knows banners disappear! (Select the first option after installing it, and it will use a continually updated list to keep you protected from annoying banner ads!)

-The Internet is Friendly again... okay maybe not friendly... but at least bannerless...
-Ashton Sanders

Website Developers - Speed

Regardless of your profession, your speed and ability to get things done quickly will make or break you. This is especially the case in the field of website design and development where almost everyone has a story of working with a "really slow" website designer, web master, etc.

At Websites in a Flash, I always am working on improving my speed no matter what the project.

"But you get paid by the hour. Who cares how long you take?" - Lazy

An sloppy and unethical business man will have this opinion, but a website designer who's goal is to create high-quality, professional websites on or before the targeted completion date won't care.

I feel that speed is one of the most important factor (seconded only by quality). That is why I call my business Websites in a Flash!

-Keep it moving
-Ashton Sanders

FavIcon - Image in the Address Bar

What is a FavIcon?

A FavIcon is the image that appears in the left side of your address bar for certain sites. For example, here are the FavIcons for Websitesinaflash.com, Blogger.com and Google.com:



It is actually a very simple process thanks to HTMLkit.com. All you need to do is make a square image that you would like to become your FavIcon, and upload it to this site. They'll give you a zip file with the FavIcon in it, and you can upload it to the root of your site. WALA! Here's the site:

http://www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/

-Ashton Sanders

How Do Search Engines Think? SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimization is fairly easy to understand. All you need to do is put your self in a Search Engines Shoes.

Let's start with Google's Mission:

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

-http://www.google.com/corporate/

Nice and Simple. But it gives you a good understanding of what you are working with and helps us to realize some very basic truths about Search Engines.

Search Engines Truth:

Search Engines want to find useful, informative sites for every search term.

Duh... And they do that by using robots (or bots) that are programmed to "index" websites and decide how useful/informative they are. So our job as Search Engine Optimizers is to make it obvious to search engines that your site is useful and informative. Here are some basics to Search Engine Optimization:

Use Valid Code: The search engine bots don't have eyes, so they can't see your website, but they can read the code that makes your website, and they do know how to read valid HTML. But if your code isn't valid, the bot can get confused and ignore parts of your site.

Content is King: Anyone can make a site that says, "Hello World!" Search engines don't value sites that don't have any content. You need to have relevant content on your website. If your site is about fixing Race Cars, but you never say race cars on your site, don't be surprised when you never find your site under the search term "race cars."

Don't Hide Text: An old search engine "cheat" was to have white text on a white background. This would allow you to have lots of keyword heavy content on your site without actually having to bug your visitors with the large amount of text. This will damage your rankings much more than it will help.

Basic Principles: Google recommends that you don't do anything solely for search engines, which isn't to say that you shouldn't get your site search engine optimized, but rather, don't waste time and money trying to develop tricks to deceive the search engines. Just make a good, quality site that people will find informative and useful.

Links:If someone likes your site enough, they'll link to it. Duh. So if your site is extremely useful, and a lot of people like it, you'll have a lot of links to it. The number of links you have to your site is one of the biggest things that the search engines will judge your site on.

That's a nice overview of how search engines think, and the basics of search engine optimization.

-Use it wisely
-Ashton Sanders

Service Review - Century Tel #3

Century Tel does it again! Yes, if you have ever had Century Tel for an Internet Provider, or have read either one of these posts: Century Tel #1 or Century Tel #2, than you know how low quality Century Tel really is.

At the end of my last Service Review about Century Tel, I finally got disconnected from them, and got Bresnan (for twice the speed and half the price). Unfortunately, I have moved to a ranch in the country, and the ONLY high-speed Internet connection avaiable is... you guessed it... Century Tel. I put off calling them for as long as possible... but the time came, and I had to reconnect to them.

The First Call

I dialed their number as I was desperately searching the internet for another provider. A representative answered the phone with their "My goal is to provide you excellent customer service for your communication needs..." or something like that. I gave them my address for my new house and asked what kind of high-speed internet I could get out there. She said I could get 6MB/sec. Hey, that's not to bad, considering I live in Polson, Montana. (Although I get currently get 8MB/sec with Bresnan.)

Right then I found Quest, who seems to have a sweet deal on DSL Internet, so I tell the Century Tel rep that I'll call them back if I can't find a better deal. Unfortunately I do have to call them back because quest doesn't give service to my area.

The Second Call

I call Century Tel back. This time the rep says I can only get 3Mb/sec.... "WHAT?!?! I just called in and they said I could get 6Mb/sec!"

The Century Tel rep said, "Really? On this address? You had them check this address?... Hmm... let me check... Oh yea look here you can get 6Mb/sec."

Are you serious? Then why did you tell me I could only get 3Mb/sec? I can't see your screen, it's your job to be a representative of Century Tel. But hey, it could be worse... at least I was lucky enough that time. If she was dumb enough to miss that one, maybe I could get an even faster connection... "Can I get the 10Mb/sec?"

"Yes, you can."

I had two reactions to this last statement: 1) AAAAHH!!!! Why won't you just tell me what I have available?! It's not my job to quiz you on all of the different options I have, It's yours! 2) Sweet! 10Mb/sec. I finally have a justification to using Century Tel over all of the other companies who don't suck.

Century Tel Does It Again (Third Call)

I get a call from Century Tel two days later saying that everything has been set up and I can now use my Internet. So I move into my new house, and try to set up the Internet, and surprise, surprise, the Internet doesn't work. I call into their help center, after doing a system and modem reboot. I get a guy who has be reboot my modem a couple more times before telling me that I should just wait a couple more days and then try it again...

Thank you for that suggestion, but I do websites. I only work on the Internet. I can't just wait a couple more days. You said it would be up today, and then called me to tell me that it was all set up, and now you tell me to just wait.

The Fourth Call

I try fiddling with my set up to get it to work for a couple hours to no avail, so I call Century Tel again to see if I could get an intelligent rep. As luck would have it, I get a lady who immediately fixes my problem with a quick username/password. Thank you! I love when bad service gets lucky. My Internet works, and I have 5Mb/sec! It's too good to be true...... literally...

The Fifth Call

This morning dawns on three computers without internet. I check all of the connections, the power, all of the lights are on. I reboot everything and make sure the username/password is in place. I didn't change anything from last night, so why is it broken? I have to call them again.

I get another guy who has no idea what's happening. He has me do the same things over and over, and nothing is working. After a half hour, it finally starts working but I've got 4Mb/sec and it's getting slower.

Whatever. At least I have Internet, and I can get to work.

Century Tel at it's Finest

At about 3:00 in the afternoon, a Century Tel truck pulls up, and a guy fiddles with my wires. He tells me that they dropped me down to 1.5Mb/second because the 6Mb/sec was acting up, and giving them problems... And sure enough, here I am stuck with 1.5Mb/sec.

Summary:

There really is nothing quite like being promised one thing and given another, and on top of that, having customer service reps who have no idea how to read. Century Tel promised me 10Mb/sec and here I am four days, and five phone calls later, with 1.5Mb/second.

I better get a discount on my ridiculously priced service, or yet another Service Review about Century Tel will be coming along soon.

-"Oh, the Importance of Quality Customer Service."

-Ashton Sanders

Google is: Funny

Yes, Google is a lot of different things. One of the things that Google is, is "Funny"

I don't know who figured this out... but let just say you wanted to drive from Boston, MA to .... France! You could ask Google Maps to give you directions...

And It's actually a fairly simple process. I've got the map saved Here:

Click to Get Directions

I'd like to bring your attention to step 5.

HAHAHA

-"I love Google!"
-Ashton Sanders

PHP - Include the Same File from Different Folders

This is a PHP tutorial to add advanced include templates to your site.

What you need to know

• Basic PHP functions: include(); and the "for" loop.

Background PHP Information

It is a very useful thing to use a template on your site. Once I have finished designing a site, and converted it into XHTML/CSS, I then make two (or more) includes out of it: "header.php" and "footer.php". Those two includes have everything that is the same on every page of the site. This allows me to easily add or remove a button, change the layout, etc. All I have to do is change one file, and the entire site is updated!

What's the Problem?

If you know includes, you know that they must be relative paths, not absolute. (So if your page is in the pages folder (/pages/) and your header.php is in the header folder (/header/), you will need to write your include like this:

include(../header/header.php);

The problem arises when you don't want to hard code every new page, in every new folder.

PHP Solution

Here is a simple for loop that will figure out what folder you are in, and put the appropriate number of "../"s to make your includes work:

<?
$folder = split("/", $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
$rootpath = "";
for($count = count($folder); $count > 2; $count--){
    $rootpath .= "../";
}
include($rootpath . "include/header.php");
?>

There you have it, some sweet, yet simple PHP.

-Enjoy,
-Ashton Sanders

CSS Button - (One SWEET CSS Button)

It is true: "You can make a button a million different ways." There are also as many ways to create a button that will change when you hover your mouse over it. You can use JavaScript, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), plain HTML, etc. But each one has it's own problems:

JavaScript button: Search Engines have a tough time with JavaScript. I recently got a client who's menu bar was made with JavaScript, and even though he had 10 or so pages, Google only new about his home page.

HTML button: The "onmouseover= and then call in a new image" works pretty well, but you will notice a half second delay or so, because the image has to load. (Yes, you can have the button's load with the site numerous different ways, but that's adding lots of random annoyances that you don't have to deal with.)

CSS button: You can also use CSS to load a new images when someone "a:hover"s over your button.

Here is the best way to make a button that changes when your mouse hovers over it (And yes it uses CSS! Which keeps your website code nice and clean, and Search Engines Love you.) This CSS button technique is also 100% valid CSS and HTML!

First you make one image that has two versions of your button: 1)"Up" and 2) "Hover" side by side. Like this:

(This button used courtesy of www.tophorseconnection.com)

The Reason you put the two images into one image is so that the "Hover" image is loaded at the same time that the "Up" image is.

Now we need to to create the HTML. All you do is add a button class to an anchor:

<a href="#" class="button">&nbsp;</a>

The button's CSS can become a little more complicated, and sometimes (you never know when it will strike) Internet Explorer won't do what you want... So here is the CSS that I created for this css button class:

a.button {
display:block;
width: 157px;
height: 46px;
background: url("../images/button-home.gif") no-repeat;
}

a.button:hover {
background-position: -170px 0
}

As you can see from this sweet CSS button, all you do is give it the correct width and height for the button in the image, and include the button image as a background with a "no-repeat." Then when someone hovers over the button, the background image moves 170px to the left! This saves you from having to load a new image!!!

Click Here to See this CSS Button Technique in Action!

More Information about this CSS Button Technique

Disabled CSS Buttons

Yes, there is so much that you can do with this technique. You can add a third image, that is grayed out (so that it looks disabled), and then apply that to a "disabled=disabled" input! (Yes you can use this same sweet CSS button technique on inputs!)

But Wait, There's More!

There is a problem with this example: you have to create a new image for every new CSS button. Here is what you do:

Instead of using an image with words on it, make an blank button image (without words). And put text between the anchors! You may need to add some extra CSS code to place the text where you want it on the CSS button.

This Sweet CSS Button Technique in use:

Here is a perfect example of this CSS Button technique reusing the same background: Database in a Flash (Yes, there is only one button image, that is reused throughout the entire program!)

Adding Animation to your CSS buttons!

I was having some trouble with a site that I developed a while ago, because the main navigation bar was made with Flash, and Internet Explorer users had to click twice on the navigation bar to get it to work. (There's a rant for another day =]) So I was stuck with how to make this sweet flash navigation bar into CSS and HTML.... This it struck me! Just a couple days ago I came up with this sweet idea using this very technique! I made a button just like above, except it was an animated gif, and the "Up" image was motionless and the "Over" image was animated! You can check it out at Fiditz.com!

-Thats all for today!
-Ashton Sanders

Internet Scams

Why do people have to be jerks? Why do people feel it is okay to rip of their neighbors? Why do people have to be so stupid?

Those are some philosophic questions that won't necessarily be answered in this blog post... but I might get around to it. =)

About a week ago, I started working with a new client. (Lets say her name was Jan.) We got together, and talked about pricing and domain names, etc. We found and bought a domain name, but my client decided that it would be best to wait 1 week before we actually would start putting together her website design.

(NOTE: There was nothing on her website. Nothing, Zilch, Nada, ABSO-FREAKING-LUTELY NOTHING!)

Before the week is up, Jan calls to tell me that she received an offer from "Google" to place her site on the top of the search engines for a cheap monthly fee. She had agreed and "Google" faxed her a contract to sign and send back. Luckily for her, she called me. Here is what the contract said:

Terms & Conditions

Guarantees
Your site will be found as promised (on the first page for: real estate agent polson, properties for sale polson, real estate for sale polson, home for sale polson, mls listings polson) within 3-5 business days upon account verification. In the event that you are not found on the first page, we will correct the placement within 2 business days and provide a pro-rated credit to compensate you for the time your site was not found as promised. *Company Name* reserves the right to modify search terms at any time to enhance overall campaign performances.

Credit Card / Checking Authorization
I understand that this contract is for a minimum period of 12 months and that *Company Name* is authorized to debit my credit card or checking account monthly during the term for the price of $119.00. After 12 months, the authorization will continue on a month by month basis, unless the customer noted above sends a cancellation by fax to *Company Name* International at 1-866-***-****.

Cancellation Policy
All fees paid prior to cancellation are non-refundable.

If you wish to discuss your account with a *Company Name* Representative, peease contact *Company Name* at 1-866-***-****. the event of default of this contract (10 days past due), I will be responsible for the full amount of this agreement.

Wow! They can get my site so good that it will appear on the first page? No... It's called Google Adwords, and the price per click for those keywords are like 5 cents! And NOBODY searches those keywords.

If you type in "real estate agent polson" (the first keyword they mentioned) into the Overture Keyword Selector Tool it will tell you that it "doesn't have any suggestions for those keywords." In other words, so few people search that term, it doesn't have statistics on it.

ARE YOU SERIOUS?

You pay $120 bucks a month to hire a company to start a Google Adwords campaign at 5 cents a click on keywords that nobody searches...

There is only one word for businesses like that: Assholes.

You are not providing any sort of service; you're just pretending to provide a service. You are a teenage prick who thinks that taking advantage of ignorant people is an honest means of making a living...

-Grow Up
-Ashton Sanders

CSS Zen Garden

What is CSS Zen Garden?

It's a great idea, thats what it is. It's the ultimate Test of a CSS Designer. They have one basic HTML file, that is free to download, but you're not allowed to change it. The only thing you are allowed to change is the css (which is all you need), and people create the coolest designs using only CSS!

Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets

HTML is very functional, and you can do a lot with it, but there are two large down sides to it. It's purposes is solely for formatting, and it clogs up your HTML documents with a lot of code. Adding a Cascading Style Sheet to your website not only makes it way easier to format( and change at a later date). It also simplifies to the code like nothing else.

I recently did a Search Engine Optimization on a site called: Clear Lake Guide Service. The previous website used about 100 lines of code for the header... Using CSS, I cut that down to 20 lines of code. It keeps the Search Engines happy, and the website designers happy.

So needless to say, you can do almost anything with CSS!

Now back to CSS Zen Garden:

Zen Garden takes submission from website Designers from all over the world. And every design looks like a completely different website, even thought the XHTML is EXACTLT the same as all of the others! Right now they are getting close to 1000 submissions! If I have a free hour, I'll throw one together as well.

"CSS makes the internet spin a little bit lighter."
-Ashton Sanders

Switching CSS on the Same Website

As I was doing some CSS research yesterday, I came upon a site that really impressed me. This site was primarily Red. It had a page called "skins". "Skins" usually mean what the website/program look like. For example, Trillian messaging program is always the same program, but you can change the way it looks by getting new skins. Here are a couple skins from their website:



Now this kind of confused be, because a website will always have one look, and you have to actually edit the site to change that, right? Wrong! On this guy's "skins" Page he had three buttons and when you clicked on them, it totally changed what the page looked like!! So of course I learned all I could about it, and here is what I have to share with you.

You can view his site here.

Here is the code:

You need two (or more) different style sheets to use for the same website. You will include it in the header like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="asset/stile.css" title="metrostation" media="screen" />
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="asset/cielo.css" title="cielo" />

This is the javascript that needs to be included in the page:

function setActiveStyleSheet(title) {
   var i, a, main;
   for(i=0; (a = document.getElementsByTagName("link")[i]); i++) {
     if(a.getAttribute("rel").indexOf("style") != -1 && a.getAttribute("title")) {
       a.disabled = true;
       if(a.getAttribute("title") == title) a.disabled = false;
     }
   }
}

Then all you need to do is create this simple anchor on your website that will switch themes to that CSS document(You will need to make a different button for each different CSS):

onclick="setActiveStyleSheet('cielo', 1);return false;"

That is freaking the coolest thing, with endless possibilities. Once I have duplicated this on mywebsite, I'll be sure to make a post so you can find it!

-Enjoy,
-Ashton Sanders

.htaccess 301 Redirect: Moved Permanently

I've already discussed how to create a 301 permanent redirect using PHP that allows you to forward one page to another. But what if you you have an entire site to redirect? What if you've changed domain names? There has got to be a better way to redirect your site besides, adding a php 301 redirect to every page. Well there is! It's called .htaccess.

My next post will be a quick introduction to ".htaccess".

If you only want to redirect from one page on your site to another, this is the .htaccess code to use:

redirect 301 /oldfolder/oldfile.htm http://www.websitesinaflash.com/new.htm

There are three parts to this redirect (make sure you put 1 space in between each element):

1) "redirect 301": This declares that you are doing a redirect, and that the code is 301: Permanent Redirect.

2) "/oldfolder/oldfile.htm": This declares the page you want to redirect from.

3) "http://www.websitesinaflash.com/new.htm": This is where you want the page to redirect them to.

This is useful when you have renamed pages, and want to make sure google knows where your new pages are, and also any visitors that would be directed to that old page will automatically be directed to the new page.

But what about directing an entire folder or site to another folder or site?
You'll have to wait for next post. =]

Enjoy
Ashton

Google Webmaster Tools

Yet another reason why Google is awesome: Webmaster Tools.

Webmaster tools is the greatest tool for anyone wanting to get their sites up in the search engines. Search Engine Optimizers who don't know about this tool, aren't really search engine optimizers.

You prove to them that you own your website in one of two ways: 1) uploading an .html document to the server with a certain name like Google2903ncvd90nk30.html or 2) add a meta tag to your home page with a similar random name. After that, Google will get you all the information that they have about your site!

The program will tell you all of the crawl errors that the Google bot has while crawling your site! So if your site has gone through a couple redesigns or upgrades, I guarantee there are pages that used to exist that Google can't find. And everyone of those pages create a 404 error for the Google bot - which, by the way, is not good. But you'll never know unless you get this tool and find out!

Its got endless tools like that. It has a robot.txt analysis page that will tell you if you have any problems with your robot.txt.

It will tell you how your pages are ranked by Google. It will tell you like 50% of your pages have medium page rank and the other 50% has low page rank. It will also tell you how many links you have directed to your website, and where they are coming from.

Google Webtools also has a place for you to submit your website's site maps! (Get gsite crawler to create your sitemaps... It makes it as easy as pie.)

And I barely scratched the surface on all of the different tools available to you through webmaster tools.

Check it out
-Ashton Sanders

Email Whitelisting at AOL

BlackList: If your website (or IP) address is on an email provider's (like AOL) blacklist, that provider will automatically block any email coming from your IP Address.

WhiteList: You guessed it... the exact opposite of being blacklisted. That provider has recognized you as a legitimate company, and allows your mail to go through to their email clients.

Feedback Loop: When you get feedback from an email provider when your email has been marked as spam by that provider's customers.


Problem: Email newsletters are not getting opened or, seen.
I had to get a clients IP address whitelisted on the major email providers. Unfortunately, when I got to AOL, too many subscribers had recently marked his newsletters as spam, so my request had been denied. What I did manage to do is get a "Feedback Loop" initiated.

AOL Feedback Loop
A Feedback Loop is very simple: Whenever an AOL member marks your newsletter as spam, scomp@aol.net sends you an email with a copy of the email that was marked as spam. This will allow you to remove the complainers from your subscriber base.

Note: The email you receive has the headers removed, so you will have to customize your email newsletters so that you can tell who you sent the newsletter to from the body of the newsletter. This is simply done by propagating information to the bottom of every email newsletter before you send it out.

Here is an Example of a footer:

This email was sent to:
*****@****.com at 1:32:56AM.

Then when you receive the complaint, you will be able to see that when you send emails to *****@****.com, they will get marked as spam. And now you can remove them.

Why don't people use the unsubscribe link?

I can tell you why I don't use the unsubscribe link on what I think is spam: Some email spammers would prefer to send out spam to random email addresses to see if they will respond. And that unsubscribe link could just send a "I use the email address, spam me!" to the email spammers, and then it's all over.

How to Get an AOL Feedback Loop Started:

Go to http://www.postmaster.aol.com/fbl/fblinfo.html and read up on how the Feedback loop works. Then fill out and submit the Feedback Loop Request Form.

That should get you started on the road to being whitelisted at AOL!

-Good Luck
-Ashton Sanders

Web Hosting for Websites

This is always an interesting topic because there are at least a million web hosts out there. If you do a search on Google for "web hosting," it brings up 208,000,000 sites. (Granted, not all of those sites do web hosting, but that is a lot of sites.) In this mess of web hosting sites, it's actually very easy to end up with an expensive provider who provides less than others. Here are some web hosting providers that I've had a lot of success with:

GoDaddy: These guys have a very comprehensive website, and they are always updating it. Their website makes it very easy to do just about anything to your site. You won't have to call tech support ever, as long as you know how to use a FAQ. Everything is there, and if you do have to call tech support, they will quickly handle your problem. They are also very cheap: Web hosting $4/month and domains $10/year. I have used Godaddy for a very long time, and have not had any major problem with them.

1and1.com: I was just introduced to this company, and they seem to have the sweetest deal on the internet. Their web hosting program allows you to host many (25 for the beginner) websites on the same hosting account. Which is amazing if you are a web designer and you have a lot of websites. To top it off that beginner account is only $3/month!! Domains are also the cheapest I've seen at $6/year.

It really seems too good to be true. And if it is, I'll update this post very soon.

-Until then,
-Ashton Sanders

Click for an Updated Service Review on 1and1.com

FireFox Vs. Internet Explorer

Which one would you choose?
It's almost 100% unanimous accross the Computer Nerd and Internet Geek world: Firfox is the best. But What does the rest of the world think? Internet Explorer comes installed on every Windows Machine, and by far most computers are windows machines.

As of September 6th, 2006, Internet Explorer owns 83% of the market share (Down .5% from 83.5% in July) while Firfox Gained .5% to 11.8. So Firefox is very slowly gaining momentum.

Other browsers posted slight gains in August, including Apple's own Safari (+.03 percent to 3.21) and Opera +.05 percent to 0.64).

(Source: Inews.com.au)

Whats the difference?

There are many differences, but the most important one to me is the extensions. An extension is a program that is added onto your Firefox. These extensions could be anything as simple as "When you double click you go to your home page" or as complex as a whole toolbar full of internet and website editing tools.

Firefox is an open source browser, and it allows programers to create extensions for Firefox. It displays all of the extensions on the Firefox Website.

Here are some of my favorite Extensions:

Web Developer by Chris Pederick
This Toolbar is a must-have for any web developer or Computer programmer. It does everything from validating the webpage you are on to Revealing passwords that Firefox remembered but you forgot. My favorite part about this tool bar is "Outline Current Elements." This tool will tell you all about the organization and what is happening on your website.
For Example, if you want a picture to align right, but for some reason there is huge space between the picture and the right side of the screen, simply hit this tool and put your mouse over the space and it will tell you what part of your code is creating that space. It may highlight your image. In which case, you have a Margin for your image that you didn't remember making. Or there may be another object in the way. This toolbar takes the guess and check out of it.


Firebug by Joe Hewitt
This is a Great Tool for validating a page. It will tell you in the bottom right of your Firefox how many error/warnings a page has. You don't have to press any extra buttons or anything.


Check out Tomorrow's post for more cool extensions.

PHP 301 Redirect: Moved Permanently

Through years of programming websites and Internet database software, etc. I've decided to work mostly with PHP. PHP is a server-side scripting language that helps to create interactive websites. It is very useful for creating dynamic pages. (Pages that have one format but fill in different information depending on what information it is given.) This is common in any online store. Every product has the exact same layout, but it has different pictures, and words.

A great thing about PHP is it's free. It's largest server-side scripting language competitor, Microsoft's ASP, isn't. The PHP syntax is widely used and is very similar to C and Perl.

If I ever have a question about PHP or need information, I always go to http://W3Schools.com. It's also a great place for beginner programmers to get their foot in the door.

Here is how to us PHP code to make 301 Redirects:

301 Redirect: Moved Permanently
This code is for page redirecting. If you ever change a page name on your website, or take it down, you need to redirect that link to another page. This is because if you've had that page up for any period of time, the search engines like google.com or yahoo.com still think that it's there. Or another site may be linking to it. This will save visitors from getting lost and never seeing your site when they cliked on your link.

Here is the PHP code:

<?
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("location: http://www.yoursite.com/newpage/newfile.php");
exit();
?>

301 Redirect to "www."
This code I programmed because I wanted to make sure that whenever someone comes to my site, they come to the "http://www.websitesinaflash.com" (NOT: "http://websitesinaflash.com") So now whenever someone types in my website name without the "www." It will automatically redirect.

"Who Cares if there is a 'www.' in front of your website or not?
The biggest reason for this is so that search engines don't index two version of the same page. For example, if a Search Engine's bot find a link to my sight that doesn't have the "www." It will index the entire site without it. And if that happens, I'll have two exact duplicates of my website.

"Wouldn't that be a good thing?"
No. Search Engines will ding you if you have duplicate content. They see it as an attempt to cheat the system. I knew a man who changed the hosting and domain name for his website. But he didn't take down his old site. After a couple months, his old site which had had 3-4 Google Page Rank, now had 0 (zero). He realized this and took down his old site, and after half a year, he was back to normal.

Here is the PHP code:

<?
if($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] != "www.websitesinaflash.com")
{
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("location: http://www.websitesinaflash.com" . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
exit();
}
?>

And there's my two cents on 301 Redirecting with PHP.

-Enjoy
-Ashton Sanders