Cranial Soup

CaSe Matters

2010-07-28T18:14:00.002-04:00

Budding young web designers and developers usually learn this pretty quick, when creating a page on Windows and not using the same case as the files and folders they are linking to. They often will use lowercase in all the URLs, regardless of the case of the actual file and folder names. And this will work fine when viewed on their Windows machine. But as soon as they upload it to a server that is running something else, like Linux, it stops working. Their page is full of broken images and dead links, because they used something like mypicture.jpg in place of the actual file name of MyPicture.jpg and about.html in place of the actual file name of About.html.

Or they upload an Index.html and wonder why when they visit their site they still see the default index.html page provided by their web host and why when they check on the server there are now two index files and not one.

For the domain name part of the URL it doesn't matter. That part is not case sensitive.

example.com is the same as Example.com is the same as EXAMPLE.com

For the rest of the URL it could matter, depending on what operating system is being run on the server that is hosting the site.

If the server is running Windows, case doesn't matter. The reason for this is because you can only have a single file or folder of a particular name in a folder, regardless of the case used in that file or folder name.

index.html is the same as Index.html is the same as INDEX.html

All three will lead to the same page.

In Windows, adding a file or folder of the same name with a different case to a folder, overwrites the original. Only one can exist.

If the server is running Linux, case matters, as you can have multiple files and folders of the same name within a folder, each having a different case.

index.html is not the same as Index.html and not the same as INDEX.html

In Linux adding a file or folder of the same name with a different case to a folder, does not overwrite the original. Linux will allow all three to exist in a folder, and each are considered different. If you change the case of a file or folder in the URL path and the server is running Linux, and that variation does not actually exist on the server, it will result in a 404.

And if you upload a file of the same name but a different case, it will not overwrite the original. You will have both on the server, and lowercase is the default index file. This is the reason why the place holder index.html supplied by your web host is still seen, even though you have uploaded your Index.html file, and why you see two index files when you view it in your FTP client.

It is always best to assume the server runs Linux when creating links to pages on the web and when typing URLs into the addressbar of your browser. It is the only way to ensure that if case matters, that you are using the correct URL.

It is also best to use all lowercase in the folder and file names of your website when creating the files and folders, regardless of what operating system you are using locally. Always assume the site will be run on a server that is case sensitive. That way there is a set standard of practice you follow that leaves less room for error.

Step 1, before you begin coding, should always be to fix all your file and folder names so you won't have to worry about it later.

How can you rank well on search engines, without fussing with SEO?

2010-07-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

If you want to rank well on search engines without fussing with SEO, then pretend it's 1995 and there are no search engines that will list you, because you can't afford the high fees for inclusion.

Now, how are you going to, in an ethical way, make people want to visit your site, stay awhile and explore, come back often, and share what they find with others?

Your site should work well and not be broken.

Make sure all links to pages on and off your site actually lead to where you want them to.
Make sure you don't have broken images.
Make sure the content loads correctly in all the major browsers.
Make sure your pages adhere to W3C standards and they validate.

Your site should be designed for people.

Make sure your template is pleasing to the eye and not painful to look at.
Make sure it has good navigation and is easy to discover and find the content your site has to offer. Good use of sidebar links to important stuff. Links to similar content pages on your site.
Make everything within 2-3 clicks of the main page.
Break up huge amounts of text with related images to help the eyes stay focused where they should be,
Your site should load fast. Use real thumbnails for your images and not just merely resizing with HTML.
Don't overwhelm people with ads.
Remove spam promptly.

Your site should invite people back.

Give your visitors multiple ways to be notified and access new content (RSS feeds, email subscription, follow on Twitter, a Facebook fan page.) Make sure new content reaches them wherever it's convenient to them.

Your site should encourage sharing.

Make sure you don't use frames. Every page should have its own unique URL that shows in the address bar.
Use Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Google Reader/Buzz buttons.

Your content should be unique and of high quality.

Don't copy other people's stuff, write your own.
Check your spelling and grammar.
Put thought into what you write.
If you post YouTube videos, add some unique commentary that doesn't exist anywhere else on the web.
For every sentence you quote from another source, write 3-5 of your own. So if you quote 3 sentences, you will have to write 9-15 to balance it. Don't quote in every article. Don't quote any more than what is necessary, less is much better than more.
If you are supplying information, make sure it is complete, accurate, and up to date.
Write about stuff people will care about enough to want read it. Don't write about what you had for lunch unless your a restaurant critic.
If your site is a blog, link out in every article to quality related content. Linking out to pages on other good blogs has the bonus in that it may earn you a trackback link on that page, or at the very least attract the eyes of the author of that blog who will stop by and check out who is linking to him.

Interact with your visitors and make them feel important.

Allow commenting and respond to comments as soon as humanly possible.
Give your visitors a means of contacting you privately, either by supplying an email address or a contact form.

Spread the word.

Become a highly respected member of a large community with similar content.. Put your link in your profile and signature. If people respect you, they will click the links.
Reach out to blogs by reading and participating in discussions. Never leave a "nice post" comment. Put some thought & work into your responses. You want to catch the attention of other readers and the bloggers themselves, and make them ask "Wow! Who is this guy?" so they will click your name and visit the site it links to. Always make your comments increase the value of that bloggers page.
Participate on social media sites and interact with people in a positive way. Get conversations going. Again, you want to make people ask "Who is that guy?" which will lead to them checking out who you are (your profile) and where you came from (your site).
Find an ad network that gives away free advertising. (I happen to really like Project Wonderful, personally)

If you do all of the above, quality inbound links will happen on their own and between the fact that others think high enough about you and your site to write about it and link to it, combined with having a great site, structurally, that makes it easy for spiders to find your content, you will get the ranking in the search engines that you deserve.

Above all, be patient, work hard, and don't engage in any "evil tricks". Good ranking does not happen overnight.

Fix: Can’t access HTML of my template after adding a frame busting script

2009-04-05T19:42:00.001-04:00

You do not want to use a frame busting script in the template of a Blogger based blog.

It will disable your ability to use the upper toolbar in the layouts mode, and you will not be able to access the HTML of your template without a bit of "URL hacking" to get to it.

If you have added it and can't access the HTML of your template, just change the layout URL, replacing the word "display" with "html".

Example:

change this: http://www.blogger.com/display?blogID=12345678
to this: http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=12345678

Now you can find and remove the frame busting script and everything will work normal again.

7 Reasons Not to Direct Link to a Developer's Download Files

2009-03-16T23:10:00.001-04:00

As a developer, I can't help but be more than a little bit bothered by the fact that some bloggers chose to direct link to application download files (.zip, .exe, etc) in some of the articles they write, rather than the page on the developer's site, in which the download links can be found.

If this is how you do things when you write articles & reviews, then I'd like to inform you that this isn't a very nice thing to do, for the following reasons:

You are depriving the developers of the full credit they deserve for the work they have done. If the application is worth writing about, it's also worth giving the developer full proper credit.
Some freeware authors have Paypal donate buttons on their sites, and your readers will never see them, therefore never click them. This deprives some developers of their only income and maybe their only incentive to keep making freeware/donationware.
Some freeware authors have advertising on their sites, and additional page impressions or clicks generated from the traffic you send them means an income for them, and your direct linking to the files prevents that from happening. This is how some software can remain free, rather than the author resorting to making it payware (or even worse, adware). If you would like things to stay free and clean, you have to do your part to help the developers keep it that way.
A blog linking to a page on a small developer's site can mean a big boost in Page Rank, making their software easier to find through search engines. This helps the people searching for the perfect tool to do the job they need, as well as the software developer that created it.
You are depriving and cheating your readers of the chance to browse around the developer's site, and perhaps the opportunity to discover more useful software they might be interested in. And in the case of the applications that come from sites like donationcoder.com, you are preventing them from discovering a wonderful software enthusiasts community that they really would enjoy, and can even request custom made freeware, made to their specifications.
In some cases, you may also be making it more difficult for your readers to find the info necessary to submit bug reports and get support, not to mention application updates and upgrades.
You may also be depriving your readers of important information related to installing or using the application, that they may need to know.

So, could you please be a really nice person to us poor freeware/donationware developers, and your readers, and fix your links to point to the pages and not the file downloads? And in the future, always link to the pages, instead.

Your readers and the software developers would really appreciate this.

Thank You.

How to Download Microsoft TechNet Spotlight Videos

2009-01-12T02:11:00.002-05:00

Microsoft offers a lot of great presentations on their TechNet Spotlight site.

The problem is that for some of them they will offer downloads, and some they will not, or they will not offer everything for download, as is the case with the Advanced Malware Cleaning presentation. They only offer the Powerpoint slides for it.

What if I don't want to or can't install Silveright? What if I want the high or low resolution video for offline viewing? Or the audio, too? Or what if I have issues with streaming the video and need to have a local copy in order to view it, at all?

I have seen some tutorials that require you to use various applications such as URL Snooper, Firebug, and VLC media player, to obtain an .asf file, but doing it that way is making it much more complicated than it has to be. Besides, you can't get everything. All you can get is a lower quality video intended for streaming purposes.

There is a simple solution, though. Whether the materials are offered with a download link on the page, or not, they do exist at the following URL's:

Powerpoint (ppt or pptx): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/msexp/download/spotlight/XXX/XXX_pres.zip

Video - Hi Res (wmv): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/msexp/download/spotlight/XXX/XXX_high.zip

Video - Lo Res (wmv): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/msexp/download/spotlight/XXX/XXX_low.zip

Audio (wma): http://microsofttech.fr.edgesuite.net/msexp/download/spotlight/XXX/XXX_audio.zip

Just replace 2 XXX's with the number of the presentation, which in the case of the Advanced Malware Cleaning one, would be 359.

My Top 10 FriendFeed Friends

2008-12-04T17:42:00.001-05:00

In response to Growmap's Top 10 FriendFeed Friend Challenge, I figured I'd post my list and tell a little about my FriendFeed experience and give some tips to those of you that might be new or may be a bit nervous about jumping in and friending strangers.

What exactly is FriendFeed?

Simply put, FriendFeed is a social network that aggregates your activities from other sites and networks. It's lifestreaming.

But it is much more than that. It's a great place to meet people that share your interests, share content, discover great content shared by others, keep up with news and events, engage in conversations, etc, etc, etc. It's the grand-daddy of social networking and a never ending internet content feeding frenzy.

It does not replace the social networks you are already a part of. It compliments them, making them even better.

How did I find FriendFeed?

I was introduced to FriendFeed by Chris Brogan. I was looking for a way to combine all my internet activities into a single RSS feed that my friends and readers could subscribe to. Sites like FaceBook were falling flat and not fulfilling the needs I had. I needed a service that wouldn't limit the number of blogs I could add, could handle some obscure services, and would be able to include my Backtype feed, containing comments I leave on the blogs I read. Chris assured me that FriendFeed was more than capable of doing all that I wanted, so I decided to give it a try.

How did I find people to follow?

When I came to FriendFeed, I came alone. I had no friends that used the service (that I knew about). Originally I didn't intend on using it for social networking. I just wanted to get myself together in one feed.

But curiosity got the best of me and I decided to do some exploring and see what kind of real potential the site had, beyond consolidating my activities into a single RSS feed. To do this, I had to start from scratch, finding interesting people to follow.

I decided to start by subscribing to Robert Scoble and working my way from there, following the writers of some of my favorite blogs and other people of interest. This was the same thing I did on Twitter, although I didn't find Twitter as engaging as FriendFeed. (conversations are much more difficult for me to participate in and follow on Twitter)

Who are the most interesting people I have found?

Of the almost 300 people that I have subscribed to on FriendFeed, these are the top 10 that have captured my interest the most:

Rahsheen - Author of the social media blog, SheenOnline. He is always posting something interesting to to think about and discuss.
Mona N. - Author of Pixel Bits, a great blog about gadgets, technology, pop culture, and Legos. She posts lots of stuff that just screams for you to comment and share your thoughts and opinions.
Kol Tregaskes - Author of the Squashy Frog photography blog. He is always posting links to lots of visually appealing stuff. If you want to be a better photographer, he's the one to follow. And if you just want candy for your eyes, you won't be disappointed.
RAPatton - Subscribing to this guy will bring you a real mixed bag of stuff, most of it quite interesting. If you love click adventures as much as I do, you'll really appreciate what he shares.
Stupid Blogger (aka Tina) - Author of Is This Stupid?. Besides informing you of all the ridiculous stuff she comes across each day, she is also very friendly and down to earth. She is one of the few that I am subscribed to that really lets you inside her head. She makes it quite easy to get to know her as a person. If you are a nice person that has no real friends (online or off) subscribing to her will make you feel like you have at least one.
Live4SoccerVacations - When you have had a bad day and need a good laugh, if you are subscribed to this guy, you won't have to look far.
Cee Bee - If it's cool, unusual, amusing, or nostalgic, you'll find it here.
Duncan Riley - Editor of The Inquisitr.
Robert Scoble - He's Robert Scoble. Need I say more? You can not join a social network he is a member of without subscribing to him or finding him interesting. It's just not allowed.
Zee - Founder of We Do Creative, he has also contributed to The Next Web, ReadWriteWeb, and The Inquisitr. As a fellow reject of the "Internet Addicts Anonymous" outreach program, he'd rather stay addicted than limit or give up his surfing habits. It's a good thing for him that he was able to find numerous ways to make his addiction profitable.

Just as important as the content this group posts and shares, is the conversations they start and contribute to. They really understand what social networks are for and they know how to do it right.

How should you find people to follow?

Now, this might not be the appropriate list for you to subscribe to, since your interests may differ from my own. The nice thing about FriendFeed is that it is different for everyone. Your Home page is not like anyone else's. It's what you make it, and you do this by subscribing to people that post the type of content you are interested in.

My suggestion to you would be to visit each of the pages of the people from my list, look over the postings they make, click some links that catch your eye, read the FriendFeed comments to their posts, then move to their "Likes & Comments" page and do the same. If you like what you see, subscribe to them so you can see more of it.

Make sure you post content, too. This is how people become interested in you. The more you post and share, the easier it will be to find others that like what you like, and more people to subscribe to. Commenting and clicking that "Like" link helps, too.

And check out the rooms that the people you follow are subscribed to. You can find interesting things and people there too.

You could even subscribe to me, if you want.

With some effort from you, you might find yourself on someone else's FriendFeed Top 10 list, some day.

WARNING:

Be really careful with FriendFeed. It is very easy to get sucked in, addicted, and totally obsessed. If you find your productivity going downhill, you will have to set some limits for yourself. Try Instant Boss and only pay attention to FriendFeed while you are on a scheduled break.

The 10 Commandments for Marketing Your site on Digg

2008-11-24T21:17:00.009-05:00

Never submit pages from your own sites. Never Digg anything from your own sites. This is the most important rule of all, so this is why it is first. If you follow nothing else on this list, at least follow this single most important rule.
Create a proper profile with an image and links to your websites and profiles on other social networks. Your profile is an important part of your site activities. It allows people to get to know who you are and more about you. The default image provided by Digg doesn't make a good impression on anyone. A properly filled out profile invites social interaction. Digg is a social site. It's important to be social. Most of the traffic I get directly from Digg is people visiting my sites through links on my profile.
Avoid using the Digg shout system as much as possible. Even if you keep your shouts private, people and search engines can still see and find them. These shouts can hurt you. It can be viewed by some people and search engines as a form of spamming.
Make friends with your Digg mutual friends on other social sites that have a private message system in which private messages are never made public and accessible to search engines. Or even better, use instant messaging and email, instead.
Get your Digg friends to submit your content for you, and don’t use the same person too frequently…rotate them. (use the private message system on other sites to suggest what to submit and Digg) And not every page on your site is a worthy candidate for submission. Be selective and only give them links to the best content you have on your site. Be very critical of your own work. You know what will appeal to the masses and what won't. Don't act like you are stupid. Don't submit things that will likely only get a few Diggs. This will hurt your site, in the long run when your content is submitted to Digg and gets a low number of Diggs. Google rates your content in part, by the number of Diggs it receives. Choose wisely.
Get real friends that are also members of Digg to submit and/or Digg your stuff. (same thing…contact them offsite) Make sure those friends are not connected to your Digg profile in any way.
Digg a big variety of content submitted by others (not just your friends), from the upcoming section, and don’t Digg anything lame. Think massive quantities of mass appeal. Ask yourself the following: "What would the majority of people assume about me if they were to see this in my Digg history?" If it's not something good, don't Digg it, even if you really like it.
Make sure you comment and say something intelligent that won’t get voted down, on at least 50% of what you Digg. Commenting and interacting with others is being social. You need to be social on a social network, or it just won't work. You want to be one of the first few to comment as frequently as possible, and you don't want to seem like you are some sort of idiot. And vote up the intelligent comments that you like, made by others. The more you are an early commenter with something intelligent to say, and the more social you are, the more likely it will be that you will catch the eye of a more powerful Digger that likes you for what you have to say and what you Digg, and he will be more likely to check out the other things you Digg, and then possibly Digg things that you Digg. More powerful Diggers have crowd appeal that you don’t. Their followers are what you are after and you get to those through them.
Do not attempt to friend the top dogs on Digg until you have established a very strong profile and have an abundance of experience. They are not going to friend you back if they don't know who you are and have never seen you around the site. An even better idea is to wait for them to friend you, first.
Never friend anyone on Digg that breaks the above rules. Remember the old saying "Birds of a feather flock together". Don't mark yourself as "guilty through association". Anyone that breaks the above rules are poor quality Diggers and their activities can get you marked as a spammer or poor quality Digger, yourself, and then either your account will get banned, you submissions will get constantly buried, or people just won’t Digg your stuff. If that happens, then you will be useless to your mutual Digg friends, and they will not be willing to help you as much. They may even stop following you. Leave the poor quality Diggers that break the above rules as just followers and not mutual friends. Don’t follow them or you will be following them to failure. Associate yourself only with quality.

And what kinds of things should you submit and Digg besides the usual stuff that has mass appeal, and content of good quality from your friends? Submit and Digg high quality pages that link to yours. Your goal should be indirect traffic coming from those sites to yours and not from Digg to yours. This is one easy way you can reward people that are kind enough to write about you. You give those pages more traffic and a boost in page rank and have more links pointing to you in the top 10 results in the search engines.

The goal is not to get a day of traffic from Digg. The goal is not to increase your own page rank for your site (this will happen any way if you follow my suggestions). The goal is not for your site to make the front page of Digg.

The goal is to take over the entire front page of the search engines so all links will point to you, directly or indirectly when someone searches for something.

Most people never go to page 2 of the results. They usually find what they want on page 1. If every article on page 1 sends them to you, you WIN BIG TIME, even if your site is buried on page 8 of the search results, which it won’t be if you are paying attention and learning from what I just said.

The higher the page rank of the sites that link to you, the higher your page rank will be. Why have a bunch of PR0 sites linking to you when you can actively do something about it and help turn them into PR3 or higher? This is one case where nice guys don't have to finish last. Being nice can help you finish first.

Procrastinators: Beware of magical mops

2008-07-17T13:10:00.005-04:00

Some of what makes anti-procrastination tools work, is their novelty. Once that novelty wears off, you are right back where you started, procrastinating again.

A hypothetical example:

Let's say I hate mopping my floor and I always procrastinate about doing it. Then I see an ad on TV for a wonder mop, with a handle that twinkles when you push it. You stop pushing, it stops twinkling. You push it faster, it twinkles more. And even more amazing, is that it also sings! I order this mop, because it seems like it could make mopping fun.

So the mop arrives, and I can't wait to get it out of it's packaging and try it. I fill my bucket with soapy water and begin mopping. The singing & twinkling is pretty cool, and before I know it, the whole floor is clean. Great! Wonderful! Terriffic! It's working. I didn't procrastinate and I got the job done.

I like this mop so much, I am having no problem mopping my floor and keeping it clean. I am not even procrastinating about it any more. This is the best mop ever! It's like magic!

But a few months later, after the novelty of the twinkling & singing mop begins to wear off, I find myself beginning to procrastinate about mopping the floor again. What happened? This was supposed to be the best mop ever. What went wrong?

Nothing went wrong. I just had an unrealistic expectation that some wonder tool was going to make me like doing a task I hate.

The truth is that nothing can make me like mopping floors, not even a magical, singing, twinkling wonder mop.

So if you try an anti-procrastination tool and it works for awhile, but then stops working...the problem isn't the tool. It's you and how you feel about the task...your real feelings.

Instead of looking for a new tool to trick yourself into thinking that you like what you hate, work on the real problem: the task itself, how you feel about it, and why.

If you can be honest with yourself, you can begin to look for a real solution instead of tricks. If you fix the root problem, you won't need a singing, twinkling mop to get things done.

Bloggers With Comment Forms That Suck a Chunk of Your Life Into a Black Hole

2008-07-15T01:57:00.006-04:00

Listen up, John Chow, Jack Humphrey, Matthew Henrickson, Andy Beard, and the rest of you lazy and/or inept bloggers out there:

I am tired of wasting my time on broken comment forms, screwball captchas, lazy moderation, and bad site design.

Too many times in the past 2 weeks, I have tried to make comments on blogs that ended up sucked into cyberspace and never making it to its destination, which is the post in which I was commenting on.

On three blogs, after taking the time to formulate an informative, relevant, quality comment (one of them was at least an hour of work), it was just sucked away after clicking the submit button, with no indication that it made it to where it was supposed to go, or it being held for moderation, or anything else. Will I ever grace those blogs with another comment again? No!

On another blog, after almost the same amount of work and hitting the submit button, I was informed that commenting on that post was closed. Why was there a comment form then? And why was there no visible indication that commenting was closed that I could see, before I wasted my time putting together a comment? Will I ever grace that blog with another comment? No!

On another blog, after I took the time to make a comment thanking the blogger for his post and tell him how useful it was to me and why, and how I was going to send him some traffic because it was that damn good, his captcha informs me that I must have flunked math in school because 4+3 does not equal 7. Don't insult me like that. I try to compliment you and thank you, and this is the thanks I get? A screwball captcha that calls me an idiot? Will I ever comment on your blog again? No!

On another two blogs, my comment was being held for moderation. Now I can understand the need to do that in order to keep spammers at bay, but don't you think you should check your queue to see if any comments were made, at least once a week, if not more often? Maybe even check it when you are making a new post, at least. Will I be commenting on those blogs again? No!

I am tired of wasting chunks of my life trying to comment unsucessfully on your blogs.

So to all you bloggers out there, please check to make sure your comment forms and captchas work, when commenting is closed that it is visibly closed to your visitors before they waste their time (remove the form if possible), if comments are being held for moderation that commentors are told this, and process your comment moderation queues on a regular basis!

And if you have no clue what you are doing or how to fix things, ask someone to help you!

Creative Commons and Author's True Intentions Creates Copy Confusion

2008-05-13T02:30:00.004-04:00

You see it every day on blogs all over the web: content posted with a Creative Commons license.

The Creative Commons license, for his own original works, is the choice of the author. He is not forced to do this (unless it's a derivative work based on another Creative Commons work, or he is publishing someone else's CC licensed work). He does it willingly. He makes the conscious decision to make his work copyable under certain restrictions, whether they be giving him credit, not making derivative works, derivative works allowed, restrictions on commercial use, no restrictions on commercial use, etc.

But he is giving you the right to copy it, nonetheless.

I spotted this one at the bottom of the page on a blog today:

According to the Creative Commons license for that site, in which the author links to, I CAN copy his content. According to the little Copyscape banner above it, I may not.

So which is it? Can I or can't I?

I wish authors would think about it seriously and make up their minds before they put the banners on their sites. They can't have it both ways. They can't say out of one side of their mouths you can copy their work, and out of the other that you can't. They are conflicting statements and ideas.

If you don't want to give people the legal right to copy your work, don't release it under any type of Creative Commons license. Retain full copyright and priviledges for yourself. And get the Creative Commons badges off your site!