Web Designers Corner – 8

Hello again,

As always, I wish you happiness and the best that life has to offer.

During this season our newsletter is packed with important information and tips to make your online presence more successful.

Changing with the times:

Every now and then, as browsers and operating systems evolve, it is a great idea to check your website to make sure it is working correctly in all of the latest browsers.  Always keep your computer updated with the current versions of any software you use. Otherwise, you might miss the need of updating your website and/or leave yourself open to security issues.    Also, I suggest updating every page’s content on a website at least once every 4 1/2 months so that it doesn’t get labeled an archive by the search engines. It doesn’t have to be a major overhaul to make it fresh in the search engine spider’s eyes. The updating only needs to change the checksum value of the page.  Every character in the source code (the code that makes up what you see as a web page) gets a numerical value and the total is the checksum value.  The search engines deem a page as an archive if the checksum value never changes. Archives get tossed into the 1000 plus search results.   The search engines are getting better as their algorithms change so our sites must evolve in order to stay competitive in today’s worldwide web.

Free Online Favicon Generator:

A favicon is the icon a person sees when they save your site to their favorites or on their desktop. http://www.favicon.co.uk/ is quality free online favicon generator site that uses your uploaded image. This free tool creates icons to be used for websites.

Tip of the Season:

Ever wanted to have a translated version of your site without paying fees for translation services? Automatic translate a website using the .htaccess file as follows:

( View a result: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=es&sl=en&u=https://ogdenian.com )

Note: occasionally Google will change the url to its translator service making the above urls need an amendment once in a while.

How to stop whois.domaintools.com from causing a content duplication penalty with your website:

I  tested my homepage on http://www.copyscape.com/

After viewing the results, I found http://whois.domaintools.com/ogdenian.com copying my content on their site upon the “site profile” page. The later would cause a duplicate content penalty in the search engines, hence making my homepage drop in the search engine result pages (SERP’s). So I block the IP address for the site by using the following code in my .htaccess file ( I obtained the IP’s from my site stats file and a little research ):

HTML5

I received a couple of emails from those worried about the impact of html5 on their websites.  Firstly, it will be a long time before they have an active version html5 that is cross browser and/or multi operating system friendly. I love the idea of a cleaner streamlined html code coming into existence and it will be easy to incorporate the new functions regardless of what the changes are. So, have no fear.  Moving into the next phase of the internet will be a challenge and rewarding at the same time.

Here is reading material for all those interested in HTML5:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5
• http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/adobe-cto-kevin-lynch-defends-flash/
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/
• http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/  

When was the last time you checked to see if someone was copying your content hence causing you to get a drop in the search engine result pages?

I suggest check your site pages once a month ( the interval of site indexing by the search engines) using the tool at http://www.copyscape.com/.  Duplicate content is the number one reason besides bad code that sites don’t come up in the search results. It pays to be diligent in regards to making sure is isn’t happening to your site.

Get a free business listing for your website with Google at

http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

Your website on mobile phones:

Here is a tip to keep up with the ever growing mobile phone market and broadband as far as your site is concerned.  Use images to replace flash items if no flash player is present. The later will insure that a visitor will see something if the phone they are using doesn’t display flash content.