Finished the Inishross House web site. It was built with the 960 grid system. All pages validate except for where lightwindow is used. The pages use a Transitional DOCTYPE, a custom XHTML DTD should be made to sort this issue out. A List Apart has a good tutorial on how to do this.
I'm begining to redesign my portfolio. I'm basing it on the 960 grid system. I've placed an notice on my site which has the basic color scheme of things at the moment. The typography needs further work, but I'll leave it for the moment.
I'll be pixel obsessing for a while. First thing's first, I found a good article on the size of headers in web pages:
Found a great resource listing different articles and tutorials on how to style HTML forms using CSS.
http://socialcmsbuzz.com/40-css-web-form-style-tutorials-for-web-developers-14082008/
One problem I have come across when using the google maps iFrame in a small div is the bubble pop up. It looks fine for a large map, but when space is a problem it causes the map to scroll to fit in the bubble which is unnecessary at times. To fix this, paste
iwloc=near&addr&
into the iframe code and the bubble dissappears! This information was found here
I mentioned previously that sixrevisions.com gave a good tutorial on how to create the Web 2.0 look in photoshop. They've now followed up on that article with a tutorial on how to code it in CSS and XHTML.
One concern about this tutorial is the heavy reliance on images for the design rather than CSS.
Quick summary of it all....
The way I look at it all, it's just creating good clean metadata. Google indexes your pages so it knows the location of them all. Inserting metadata (title, headings, alt text, etc.) into these locations allows Google to know what it's indexing.
SeoCentro provide a very good resource for checking your meta tags
http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/metatag-analyzer.html
I know search engines crawls through web sites and index pages based on their content and keywords. That's about it, SEO is huge business these days so I'm reaading into it at the moment. The first book I got is Brad Callen's "Search Engine Optimization Made Easy". I' m going to discuss this book and the main points in it along with other resources on the net.
A good (free) keyword research and management tool to use is Good Keywords.
PageRank is Google's way of giving a popularity rating for a website. It is based on "votes", a vote is a link from one website to yours. The more votes you have, the higher page ranking your website will have. PageRanking is one of the factors Google looks at when ranking websites.
Another factor is the sites that link to your website. A website with a high PageRank linking to yours increases your website PageRank more than a low PageRanked website would. The quantity of pages that link to your website also affects your PageRank.
To find your sites Google Page Rank, download the Google Toolbar.
The page rank for my site (http://www.michaeldoyle.eu) is 0/10, which doesn't come as a surprise, however, it will provide me with a blank canvas to use SEO techniques. When seearching Google for the term "Michael Doyle", a wikipaedia entry is the first result. It's PageRank is 4/10. Callen's guide idicates this is low page rank and it'll be easy to gain a higher ranking. However, the only way to increasethe PageRank is to get other sites to cast your site a vote.
Google Toolbar showing PageRank
There are two search engine optimization methods: on page and off page optimization.
The page's title is the most important piece of text as this is what appears in the search results. It has to encourage users to click on your site. The title should be descriptive using the least amount of words as possible. Words like "and", "the" etc. should not be used. Keywords must be used.
H1 should be used to define the most important section of your website. It should be placed at the top of the page as Google reads text from top left to bottom right. Using your primary keywords is recommended if possible.
H2 & H3 should be used to define the sub-headings. Secondary keywords should be used where possible.
Use on keywords in a paragraph, however, do not over do it. Google may penalise you for it.
Give your image files appropriate names (not 01.jpg), try to use keywords in the image file names. Use keywords with ALT text, but add in "image" or "graphic" as well. If not, Google may see it as spam. This applies to the filename also. Always include the title tag in the image (this is the tool tip text that appears).
If you have a two-column layout using the leftmost for navigation, Google will read this first. However, placing in an empty div at the top of this column should force Google to read the right content (the main body) first.
On page optimization won't have a huge affect on your PageRank, however, a well formed page will be more easily accessible to search engines as well as your visitors. Many falsely believe that tweaking their Keyword Density and where those keywords are placed will have a big effect on your rankings. Keyword Density refers to the amount of time a keywords appear on a page, compared to the total number of words on the page. Off page optimization makes a huge difference to the sucess of your site compared to on page.
Trying to finish my Graphic design project tonight and discovered how to make a swf with a transparent background. HTML code is:
Add these parameters to the "param" tag:
param name="wmode" value="transparent"
Add this parameter to the embed tag:
wmode="transparent"
So the full code I used to embed a swf file called "brain.swf" is:
<object width="216" height="144" data="brain.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="src" value="brain.swf" /></object>
This works in Firefox 3 and IE 7, haven't tested it out on any other browsers yet. Flash 6 or higher is needed.
Well, I'm not sure whether to call this a blog or a sideblog. Either way, it's my personal, never-ending, post-it note, so that when I learn something interesting, it'll find its way here.
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