How To Create Various Redirects
07 Apr
Posted by ProCOM 
on April 7, 2008 – 12:33 am - 321 views
(No Ratings Yet)
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There are many reasons for redirecting a user to another page. Perhaps the page has moved or perhaps they are trying to access a page they shouldn’t have access to. Or maybe you want to put in an interstitial ad (those full page ads displayed before taking you to the actual page you want to go to).
There are also many ways of implementing a redirect, each with advantages and disadvantages appropriate for different scenarios.
HTML Redirect/META refresh
This is probably one of the most widely used since it is easy to implement. Using a <meta> tag, once a page is loaded, users can be redirected to another page after a certain amount of time. All those “you will be redirected in 5 seconds” pages use a <meta> refresh tag to accomplish this.
The code goes in the <head></head> section of your HTML and looks like the following:
<meta type=”http-equiv” content=”7;url=http://www.programimi.com” />
The number before the semi-colon indicates how many seconds the browser should wait until redirecting the user to the page specified. If an URI is not specified, the page will refresh itself after the set amount of seconds — useful for continuously updating a page without having to use JavaScript.
The PHP Redirect (and other languages)
Using a server-side language, you can invisibly redirect the user to another page. For example, this can be useful if they try to access a secure page without proper authorization and you wish to redirect them to a login page.
The syntax varies with language but here is the PHP code:
<?php
header(”Location: http://www.programimi.com/”);
?>
This modifies the header to send the user to a desired page. Note that headers can only be modified if no output has been sent yet.
.htaccess Redirect
Using .htaccess to redirect has several purposes. Similar to forcing www, you can use mod_rewrite to send users to a different destination. The code is simple — redirect all page requests to a new domain.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
The advantage to this method is that it will maintain the page URI the user was trying to access. For example, if they navigate to http://www.olddomain.com/contact.php, they will be redirected to http://www.newdomain.com/contact.php instead of just the domain root.
Moved Permanently - 301 Redirect
Also, note the R=301 option at the end of the .htaccess code above. This 301 code is to let search engines know that the domain has been moved permanently and all old links should be updated to the new domain.
A 301 Redirect can also be achieved in PHP by adding this line prior to the redirection line:
header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
If you’re into SEO (search engine optimization), listing the old domain as 301 is very important.
JavaScript?
There’s actually another method I left out and that is redirecting with JavaScript. I left it out because I can’t think of a situation where it would be better suited than the other methods described above. That, and there are more compatibility issues with JavaScript.
Know of any other ways of redirecting?
5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back
05 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 5, 2008 – 9:33 pm - 201 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:
1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox
When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.
2) Start a web log (blog)
Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.
3) Carry out polls or surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.
4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games
Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.
5) Update frequently with fresh content
Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!
Building Your Mailing List with Downloads
04 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 4, 2008 – 9:32 pm - 119 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough — if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.
You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let’s take a look at a very good example — apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via — guess where — iTunes!
In reality, you do not need to offer such a “heavyweight” download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.
However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.
First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!
Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the harddisk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.
Generating Revenue With Good Planning
03 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 3, 2008 – 9:32 pm - 167 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace.
The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a “food” section, an “accomodation” section and an “entertainment” section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.
When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google’s Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.
As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!
How To Setup Your Own Dns (Domain Name Server)
03 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 3, 2008 – 6:11 pm - 628 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...This is only a quick tutorial, there are literally hundreds of little tricks you can do with a DNS, but this will get your basics up and running. I’m assuming you want to setup a windows DNS server, but the principals will work for most servers.
You will need..
- 1) A domain name over which you have full control
- 2) DNS server software(Windows server always comes with one of these)
- 3) At least one fixed IP address, allthough two is highly desirable
- 4) An idea of what services you want on your server
The first thing you need to do is create your new domain entry. In windows this is called a “Zone” and you will have one for every domain name you have. Add your main domain in the forward lookup zone as a Primary zone, which will be in the format “Domainname.com”, or .co.uk, or whatever, you shouldn’t need any more details for this bit. Do *not* allow dynamic updates unless this is a local network DNS. Once it is created you will have 2 entry’s under your new domain, “SOA”(Or Start of Authority) and “NS”(Or Name server). If you want a 100% compliant DNS then you should now follow the same process but adding a domain as a reverse lookup zone. Any changes you make to the forward lookup should have the “Update Reverse Lookup” option ticked if its available, if not you must update the reverse zone manually(This is very important).
Now edit the “NS” entry in your forward zone to “NS0.DomainName.Com”, and set it to the relevant IP address. Add another (NS) record and set it to “NS1.DomainName.Com”. If using 2 IP address, try to make NS0 the first IP. Now you need to configure the SOA entry in the forward lookup zone. The serial number should be changed to a date followed by a number in this format “YYYYMMDDnn”, this is not required, but is advised by RIPE. The primary server will be the “NS0.domainname.com” entry you just made and the responsible person should be left for now. The refresh interval should be set somewhere between 1200 to 43200 seconds, the retry should be between 120-7200 seconds and the expires after should be around 2-4 weeks(I’ll let you work out the seconds for that). The minimum TTL is quite important, and depending on what you are going to do with the domain, you might need to tweak this a bit. Typically a value between 1-3 hours should be used. Now go to your “Name server” settings in your SOA record(In windows this is a tab in the same window) remove the defaults, and add your two Name servers that you just setup. We will come back to the SOA record later, but for now we need to do some more stuff.
If you want a website, then your going to want the WWW. setting up. We will set it up as an “A” record, which means it is a separate top level record and will be populated separately from other entries. So add an “A” to your forward lookup zone and put the entry as “WWW”, and set the IP address to wherever you want the website to be. This will be where the domain always goes, and it could be anywhere. Just make sure there is a web server waiting there for it. If you want FTP, then setup the same thing but with “FTP” in the entry. You will now also have to setup “A” records for the NS0 and NS1 name servers that you added previously, just make them the same as WWW and FTP, but make sure the IP addresses match the ones used for setting up the “NS” records. Also add a blank “A” record, this will make sure that “domainname.com” works as well as “www.domainname.com”.
Now you should decide whether or not you want to have mail on this domain. It is Hegel advisable that you set one up, even if it just to catch domain mail about abuse or potential problems that might occur. You can find plenty of high quality free mail servers out there, but I would recommend “Mail Enable”, its free and provides everything you would want, but if you want webmail you do have to pay something extra for it. We will now configure the MX records. Add an “A” name for your mail server, you can add 2 if you want, but for simplicity I would advise staying with 1. We will call ours “Mail.domainname.com”, and point it to one of our IP addresses. Now add an “MX” record in the Forward Lookup zone, giving it the full “A” record you just entered “Mail.domainname.com”, and do not setup a host or child domain, just leave it blank.
This next step isn’t needed, but is again highly recommended.
Now to finish the SOA you need to add two more records. A “RP” entry, which is a Responsible Person, and they will be the contact point for domain complaints and a “MB” entry, which is a mailbox entry. The “MB” should just be pointed to the mail server domain name “Mail.domainname.com”, and the “RP” should have the host or domain set to the name of your mail box. So for this server it will be “Tony.Domainname.com”, and the mailbox will be set to the “MB” record you just made. Don’t worry about the RP address having no “@” in it, this is the expected format for an “RP” entry. You will now have to go back into the SOA and change the responsible person to the new “RP” record you just made.
And thats it, your done! You can add as many “A” records as you like to point to other web servers, or a multitude of FTP sites. And you can add “CNAME” records to basically point to another name, usually an “A” record, like an alias.
Now before you switch your domain on, you need to check that the server is performing properly. So go to www.dnsreport.com, and run the report on your domain “domainname.com”, and it will give you a very detailed report of any problems, and even a short description of how to fix the problems. If all is OK, then you are ready to go live. If your domain name is new, or not currently hosted anywhere then the first thing you should do is re-point the domain at your new server. You will typically do this with the provider who owns the domain, and it will be different with all hosts. But the basic settings are the same. You will be asked for at least 2 name servers and ip addresses to go with them. Just put in “NS0.domainname.com” and “NS1.domainname.com” and put in the correct IP addresses. Make sure you do not mess this up, as changes to your main NS servers could potentially take several days to straighten themselves out. Update these settings, and then sit back and wait. You can do a whois on the main DNS server of your domain provider to check if the settings have worked, but again this doesn’t always work. For the big 3 domains(.com .net .org) you can do a whois on the network associates site to see the changes instantly. You can also track the progress of the domain changes by doing an NSLookup in dos, like this…
c:\nslookup ns0.domainname.com NS0.yourprovidersdns.com
That will give you the entries your domain provider has
c:\nslookup www.domainname.com ns0.domainname.com
And this will tell you if the changes for your domain have gone through to your ISPs DNS yet. It should give you back the IP address of your new DNS server.
You should always make sure your server is backed up, and that you refresh or update the DNS when you are making changes.
A Web Standards Checklist - How to make a proper website
03 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 3, 2008 – 12:14 pm - 484 views
(11 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...A web standards checklist
The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is ‘table-free sites’, for others it is ‘using valid code’. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc).
In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.
About the checklist
This is not an uber-checklist. There are probably many items that could be added. More importantly, it should not be seen as a list of items that must be addressed on every site that you develop. It is simply a guide that can be used:
- to show the breadth of web standards
- as a handy tool for developers during the production phase of websites
- as an aid for developers who are interested in moving towards web standards
The checklist
1.Quality of code
a. Does the site use a correct Doctype?
b. Does the site use a Character set?
c. Does the site use Valid (X)HTML?
d. Does the site use Valid CSS?
e. Does the site use any CSS hacks?
f. Does the site use unnecessary classes or ids?
g. Is the code well structured?
h. Does the site have any broken links?
i. How does the site perform in terms of speed/page size?
j. Does the site have JavaScript errors?
2. Degree of separation between content and presentation
a. Does the site use CSS for all presentation aspects (fonts, colour, padding, borders etc)?
b. Are all decorative images in the CSS, or do they appear in the (X)HTML?
3. Accessibility for users
a. Are “alt” attributes used for all descriptive images?
b. Does the site use relative units rather than absolute units for text size?
c. Do any aspects of the layout break if font size is increased?
d. Does the site use visible skip menus?
e. Does the site use accessible forms?
f. Does the site use accessible tables?
g. Is there sufficient colour brightness/contrasts?
h. Is colour alone used for critical information?
i. Is there delayed responsiveness for dropdown menus (for users with reduced motor skills)?
j. Are all links descriptive (for blind users)?
4. Accessibility for devices
a. Does the site work acceptably across modern and older browsers?
b. Is the content accessible with CSS switched off or not supported?
c. Is the content accessible with images switched off or not supported?
d. Does the site work in text browsers such as Lynx?
e. Does the site work well when printed?
f. Does the site work well in Hand Held devices?
g. Does the site include detailed metadata?
h. Does the site work well in a range of browser window sizes?
5. Basic Usability
a. Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
b. Are heading levels easy to distinguish?
c. Does the site have easy to understand navigation?
d. Does the site use consistent navigation?
e. Are links underlined?
f. Does the site use consistent and appropriate language?
g. Do you have a sitemap page and contact page? Are they easy to find?
h. For large sites, is there a search tool?
i. Is there a link to the home page on every page in the site?
j. Are visited links clearly defined with a unique colour?
6. Site management
a. Does the site have a meaningful and helpful 404 error page that works from any depth in the site?
b. Does the site use friendly URLs?
c. Do your URLs work without “www”?
d. Does the site have a favicon?
1. Quality of code
1.1 Does the site use a correct Doctype?
A doctype (short for ‘document type declaration’) informs the validator which version of (X)HTML you’re using, and must appear at the very top of every web page. Doctypes are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won’t validate without them.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/
More:
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/about-boxmodel.htm
http://gutfeldt.ch/matthias/articles/doctypeswitch.html
1.2 Does the site use a Character set?
If a user agent (eg. a browser) is unable to detect the character encoding used in a Web document, the user may be presented with unreadable text. This information is particularly important for those maintaining and extending a multilingual site, but declaring the character encoding of the document is important for anyone producing XHTML/HTML or CSS.
http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/
More:
http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset.html
1.3 Does the site use Valid (X)HTML?
Valid code will render faster than code with errors. Valid code will render better than invalid code. Browsers are becoming more standards compliant, and it is becoming increasingly necessary to write valid and standards compliant HTML.
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/sit2003/06.htm
More:
http://validator.w3.org/
1.4 Does the site use Valid CSS?
You need to make sure that there aren’t any errors in either your HTML or your CSS, since mistakes in either place can result in botched document appearance.
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/articles/webrev/199904.html
More:
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
1.5 Does the site use any CSS hacks?
Basically, hacks come down to personal choice, the amount of knowledge you have of workarounds, the specific design you are trying to achieve.
http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg@webstandardsgroup.org/msg05823.html
More:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CssHack
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=ToHackOrNotToHack
http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/
1.6 Does the site use unnecessary classes or ids?
I’ve noticed that developers learning new skills often end up with good CSS but poor XHTML. Specifically, the HTML code tends to be full of unnecessary divs and ids. This results in fairly meaningless HTML and bloated style sheets.
http://www.clagnut.com/blog/228/
1.7 Is the code well structured?
Semantically correct markup uses html elements for their given purpose. Well structured HTML has semantic meaning for a wide range of user agents (browsers without style sheets, text browsers, PDAs, search engines etc.)
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/index04.htm
More:
http://www.w3.org/2003/12/semantic-extractor.html
1.8 Does the site have any broken links?
Broken links can frustrate users and potentially drive customers away. Broken links can also keep search engines from properly indexing your site.
More:
http://validator.w3.org/checklink
1.9 How does the site perform in terms of speed/page size?
Don’t make me wait… That’s the message users give us in survey after survey. Even broadband users can suffer the slow-loading blues.
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/
1.10 Does the site have JavaScript errors?
Internet Explore for Windows allows you to turn on a debugger that will pop up a new window and let you know there are javascript errors on your site. This is available under ‘Internet Options’ on the Advanced tab. Uncheck ‘Disable script debugging’.
2. Degree of separation between content and presentation
2.1 Does the site use CSS for all presentation aspects (fonts, colour, padding, borders etc)?
Use style sheets to control layout and presentation.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-style-sheets
2.2 Are all decorative images in the CSS, or do they appear in the (X)HTML?
The aim for web developers is to remove all presentation from the html code, leaving it clean and semantically correct.
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/benefits/index07.htm
3. Accessibility for users
3.1 Are “alt” attributes used for all descriptive images?
Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-text-equivalent
3.2 Does the site use relative units rather than absolute units for text size?
Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values’.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-relative-units
More:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-relative-units
http://www.clagnut.com/blog/348/
3.3 Do any aspects of the layout break if font size is increased?
Try this simple test. Look at your website in a browser that supports easy incrementation of font size. Now increase your browser’s font size. And again. And again… Look at your site. Does the page layout still hold together? It is dangerous for developers to assume that everyone browses using default font sizes.
3.4 Does the site use visible skip menus?
A method shall be provided that permits users to skip repetitive navigation links.
http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=12
Group related links, identify the group (for user agents), and, until user agents do so, provide a way to bypass the group.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/#tech-group-links
…blind visitors are not the only ones inconvenienced by too many links in a navigation area. Recall that a mobility-impaired person with poor adaptive technology might be stuck tabbing through that morass.
http://joeclark.org/book/sashay/serialization/Chapter08.html#h4-2020
More:
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/websmith/508/o.htm
3.5 Does the site use accessible forms?
Forms aren’t the easiest of things to use for people with disabilities. Navigating around a page with written content is one thing, hopping between form fields and inputting information is another.
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmladvanced/forms/
More:
http://www.webstandards.org/learn/tutorials/accessible-forms/01-accessible-forms.html
http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessible-form-builder.asp
http://accessify.com/tutorials/better-accessible-forms.asp
3.6 Does the site use accessible tables?
For data tables, identify row and column headers… For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-table-headers
More:
http://www.bcc.ctc.edu/webpublishing/ada/resources/tables.asp
http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/accessible-table-builder_step1.asp
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/tables/
3.7 Is there sufficient colour brightness/contrasts?
Ensure that foreground and background colour combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having colour deficits.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-colour-contrast
More:
http://www.juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.asp
3.8 Is colour alone used for critical information?
Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour, for example from context or markup.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-colour-convey
There are basically three types of colour deficiency; Deuteranope (a form of red/green colour deficit), Protanope (another form of red/green colour deficit) and Tritanope (a blue/yellow deficit- very rare).
More:
http://colourfilter.wickline.org/
http://www.toledo-bend.com/colourblind/Ishihara.html
http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php
3.9 Is there delayed responsiveness for dropdown menus?
Users with reduced motor skills may find dropdown menus hard to use if responsiveness is set too fast.
3.10 Are all links descriptive?
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context - either on its own or as part of a sequence of links. Link text should also be terse.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-meaningful-links
4. Accessibility for devices.
4.1 Does the site work acceptably across modern and older browsers?
Before starting to build a CSS-based layout, you should decide which browsers to support and to what level you intend to support them.
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/process/index_step01.cfm
4.2 Is the content accessible with CSS switched off or not supported?
Some people may visit your site with either a browser that does not support CSS or a browser with CSS switched off. In content is structured well, this will not be an issue.
4.3 Is the content accessible with images switched off or not supported?
Some people browse websites with images switched off - especially people on very slow connections. Content should still be accessible for these people.
4.4 Does the site work in text browsers such as Lynx?
This is like a combination of images and CSS switched off. A text-based browser will rely on well structured content to provide meaning.
More:
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview
4.5 Does the site work well when printed?
You can take any (X)HTML document and simply style it for print, without having to touch the markup.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/goingtoprint/
More:
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign/css.html#print
4.6 Does the site work well in Hand Held devices?
This is a hard one to deal with until hand held devices consistently support their correct media type. However, some layouts work better in current hand-held devices. The importance of supporting hand held devices will depend on target audiences.
4.7 Does the site include detailed metadata?
Metadata is machine understandable information for the web
http://www.w3.org/Metadata/
Metadata is structured information that is created specifically to describe another resource. In other words, metadata is ‘data about data’.
4.8 Does the site work well in a range of browser window sizes?
It is a common assumption amongst developers that average screen sizes are increasing. Some developers assume that the average screen size is now 1024px wide. But what about users with smaller screens and users with hand held devices? Are they part of your target audience and are they being disadvantaged?
5. Basic Usability
5.1 Is there a clear visual hierarchy?
Organise and prioritise the contents of a page by using size, prominence and content relationships.
http://www.great-web-design-tips.com/web-site-design/165.html
5.2 Are heading levels easy to distinguish?
Use header elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/wai-pageauth.html#tech-logical-headings
5.3 Is the site’s navigation easy to understand?
Your navigation system should give your visitor a clue as to what page of the site they are currently on and where they can go next.
http://www.1stsitefree.com/design_nav.htm
5.4 Is the site’s navigation consistent?
If each page on your site has a consistent style of presentation, visitors will find it easier to navigate between pages and find information
http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/accessibility/navigation.asp
5.5 Does the site use consistent and appropriate language?
The use of clear and simple language promotes effective communication. Trying to come across as articulate can be as difficult to read as poorly written grammar, especially if the language used isn’t the visitor’s primary language.
http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/accessibility/clear.asp
5.6 Does the site have a sitemap page and contact page? Are they easy to find?
Most site maps fail to convey multiple levels of the site’s information architecture. In usability tests, users often overlook site maps or can’t find them. Complexity is also a problem: a map should be a map, not a navigational challenge of its own.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020106.html
5.7 For large sites, is there a search tool?
While search tools are not needed on smaller sites, and some people will not ever use them, site-specific search tools allow users a choice of navigation options.
5.8 Is there a link to the home page on every page in the site?
Some users like to go back to a site’s home page after navigating to content within a site. The home page becomes a base camp for these users, allowing them to regroup before exploring new content.
5.9 Are links underlined?
To maximise the perceived affordance of clickability, colour and underline the link text. Users shouldn’t have to guess or scrub the page to find out where they can click.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html
5.10 Are visited links clearly defined?
Most important, knowing which pages they’ve already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040503.html
6. Site management
6.1 Does the site have a meaningful and helpful 404 error page that works from any depth in the site?
You’ve requested a page - either by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you’ve found yourself in the middle of cyberspace nowhere. A user-friendly website will give you a helping hand while many others will simply do nothing, relying on the browser’s built-in ability to explain what the problem is.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/
6.2 Does the site use friendly URLs?
Most search engines (with a few exceptions - namely Google) will not index any pages that have a question mark or other character (like an ampersand or equals sign) in the URL… what good is a site if no one can find it?
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls
One of the worst elements of the web from a user interface standpoint is the URL. However, if they’re short, logical, and self-correcting, URLs can be acceptably usable
http://www.merges.net/theory/20010305.html
More:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls
http://www.websitegoodies.com/article/32
http://www.merges.net/theory/20010305.html
6.3 Does the site’s URL work without “www”?
While this is not critical, and in some cases is not even possible, it is always good to give people the choice of both options. If a user types your domain name without the www and gets no site, this could disadvantage both the user and you.
6.4 Does the site have a favicon?
A Favicon is a multi-resolution image included on nearly all professionally developed sites. The Favicon allows the webmaster to further promote their site, and to create a more customized appearance within a visitor’s browser.
http://www.favicon.com/
Favicons are definitely not critical. However, if they are not present, they can cause 404 errors in your logs (site statistics). Browsers like IE will request them from the server when a site is bookmarked. If a favicon isn’t available, a 404 error may be generated. Therefore, having a favicon could cut down on favicon specific 404 errors. The same is true of a ‘robots.txt’ file.
How To Force www (or no-www) In Domain Name
02 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 2, 2008 – 1:25 am - 358 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...One of the first things I do when I begin implementing a site is to force the www (or no-www) in the domain name. Why would I want to do this? For search engine optimization of course. For example, programimi.com redirects to www.programimi.com. What this means for Google is that it gets crawled as one site. Sites that link to programimi.com will add to the pagerank of www.programimi.com. Theoretically, this could double your Pagerank score (but not necessarily your Pagerank rating).
Anyway, here is the code to add to your .htaccess file to force www, but make sure mod_rewrite apache module is turned on:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.programimi\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.programimi.com/$1 [R=301,L]
And here is the code to force no-www (in spirit of no-www.org):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.programimi\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://programimi.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Of course, replace programimi.com above with your own domain name. To edit your .htaccess file you may need to enable view hidden files, or if the file doesn’t exist, you’ll have to create it yourself. The best way is to do it through an SSH connection to your server.
If you don’t have access to .htaccess, you could also accomplish the same thing through php with a simple script at the top of every page that will try to find www in the URL and redirect if found. Not the most elegant solution, but it does what it needs to do for those who can’t edit .htaccess for some reason.
if(!substr($_SERVER[’HTTP_HOST’], ‘www’)) //check if www exists in URL
{ header(’Location: http://www.programimi.com/’); //redirect to www.programimi.com
}
Or for those using wordpress, you could simply install a plugin that does all this for you! One example plugin is WWW-Redirect.
How To Have Websites Built For You The Cheap Way
01 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 1, 2008 – 9:32 pm - 171 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here’s a rough guide:
First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer’s wages, advertising costs and so on.
Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it’s a “no-brainer” choice.
However, choose freelancers with care. The best way to do this would be to go to elance.com. There, you can post the abstract of your project and get thousands of freelancers to bid on your project, so you will surely get the best deal. On top of that, you will be able to choose the designers based on their experience, past transactions and ratings, so your value for money is secured.
Another route you can take is to design your website yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Just spend a little time to sit down and do it yourself. You’ll be able to design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and so on.
Podcasting for Newbies
01 Apr
Posted by ProCOM on April 1, 2008 – 10:43 am - 151 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Podcasting is a relatively new method of delivering radio to listeners with internet access. This free method of listening to your favorite radio show is becoming increasingly popular as more and more people learn about it. Podcasting is usually commercial free, which is another reason for its popularity.
Podcasting is also extremely popular because you choose when and where you want to listen to it. You can also decide which episode you want to hear and have a choice of listening to the podcasting episodes on an iPod (where this distribution form got its name from), a computer or any MP3. The flexibility of podcasting has catapulted it into the public’s attention.
In order to get started downloading podcasts, you need to download a podcatcher program. This allows your computer to automatically download podcasting episodes of your favorite radio shows which have been converted into digital audio files. There are several podcatchers, with the most popular being Apple’s iTunes which is also a searching device for new and interesting podcasting. You can use it to find more radio shows that you might be interested in listening to.
Other podcatchers that are free include Juice and Odeo. Both of these podcatchers also have podcasting search engines built in so you find new radio shows to download. Once you have a radio show that you wish to listen to, you can subscribe to the RSS feed so that your podcatcher can download the radio shows without you having to go to the radio website each time a new episode is released. This saves incredible amounts of time and is quite easy to use, as all the podcatchers have an easy to use interface that allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds with just the click of a button.
Once you have set up your podcasting preferences, you don’t have to worry about anything except searching for new and more interesting podcasting feeds. It is very easy to discard or erase any shows that you no longer enjoy and since all the episodes of your favorite radio shows will be saved on your computer, they are able to be accessed or downloaded to your iPod or MP3 player for easy listening whenever you wish. Unsubscribing from any podcasting broadcast is quite easy as well and you can quickly find new shows to replace the ones you delete.
There are various websites dedicated to podcasting where you can find information and new podcasts as well as fellow radio fanatics who are more than willing to share their favorite radio show feeds with you. Among the more popular are Podcasting News and Podcast as well as Podcast Alley. You can find podcasting forums on all of these websites as well as featured radio shows, both popular and lesser known. It is a good opportunity to find something new and unique for your personal radio programming.
Podcasting is still growing in popularity as it is a fairly new technology. It has great potential though and will probably continue to improve and expand over the years to come, so go ahead and jump in now.
Figuring Out Your Link Popularity
31 Mar
Posted by ProCOM on March 31, 2008 – 11:42 pm - 169 views
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Link popularity is a common term that is used with internet marketing. It basically means how many links to your website from other sites on the internet there are. There are various ways to measure this and this article will help you make sense of them.
Link popularity is important to all webmasters. It determines where you rank on the search engine pages for your keywords and can be absolutely vital in getting that coveted number one space on Google! While other factors are included in the equation, link popularity definitely figures high on the list and you should do your best to increase your incoming link as much as possible.
First of all, if you just want to check and see how many other ranked sites are linked to you on any particular search engine, you can simply enter “link:” (minus quotation marks) followed by the URL of your website and hit Enter. This will quickly turn up a basic link popularity count for you and is a good indication of the number of links you have from other areas.
It is important to note that you will get different results from different search engines because each search engine ranks link popularity according the links that it personally knows about. So if a website that links to you has made it onto Yahoo’s list, but not Google’s, it will only appear as a link in your link popularity rating when you do a search on Yahoo. On Google, you will be at least one link down.
Also, there are filters that may prohibit backlinks from being counted toward your site. This can affect your link popularity rating as well, changing it from search engine to search engine. It can also change with time, as the search engines are constantly adjusting their filters and requisites for link popularity.
PageRank, by Google is a basic form of link popularity, ranking sites from 0 (no link popularity) to 6 (amazingly high link popularity) must be taken with a grain of salt because of the above. There are most likely many sites that link to you which are not yet listed on Google and have not been spidered. They will not show up on your PageRank number until Google has checked them and only then if they are not banned by the filtering system which is notoriously difficult to get through on Google.
There are special freeware and shareware programs such as Link Popularity Check 3.0.3. You can install these on your computer and check your link popularity at any point with the click of a mouse. Or, if you prefer not to download anything, you can find several link popularity counters online. Some can even be set up right on your website, to display your link popularity stats to the public. This is only recommended if you happen to have fairly high ratings, otherwise, you are simply advertising that you are not very popular!
Link popularity is fairly easy to check and it is worth keeping an eye on after any promotional campaign. This way, you can see which marketing techniques boost your ratings more and continue only with the successful ones.
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