105 Posts Found

These days, Firefox and Chrome are both excellent browsers that can greatly aid your Web development efforts. That is thanks to their built-in developer tools. If you use the Inspect Element option (right-click) you can see a great depth of options. Modify CSS to see how changes you want to make will look real-time. Having JavaScript errors? You can track those down. Want to see … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Platform & Development Tools, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

Handling email, whether it is for a newsletter, autoresponder, drip campaigns, etc., is one of those things that doesn’t seem so challenging until you try to do it. And, in fact, for small volumes, it probably isn’t that difficult. But, once you start getting any significant number of subscribers, things get complicated. You want to make sure your server can handle the volume and you … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Email, Miscellaneous, Useful Code, Tips & Tools

• UrlTrends
  UrlTrends was developed to allow Webmasters, Search Engine Optimizers, and domain buyers to determine a website’s (or a specific page’s) rankings in the various search engines and directories. Based on this information you can make competitive analysis of any website with another website — and from this you could possibly determine whether your SEO tactics are positive or negative to your website;

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Useful Sites and Online Tools

MySQL Tools

• phpMyAdmin – without a doubt the leading script for managing your MySQL databases. It can do almost anything you want and more.
• automysqlbackup.sh – A script to take daily, weekly and monthly backups of your MySQL databases.
• BigDump: Staggered MySQL Dump Importer – a script to stagger the import of large and very large MySQL Dumps to avoid problems

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.), SQL

Update (January 1, 2017): I have now switched to using a modified version of code found in the font resizer WordPress plugin, but the code below is still useful on its own and as a tutorial on the topic.

A useful and common accessibility feature is a text size switcher. This is a tool that allows users to alter the size … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Fonts, JavaScript, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

Update (Jan 1, 2017): Since the time I wrote this back in April 2007, WordPress has continued its march toward CMS dominance and I now run all my sites with it. There may still be some good reasons to consider alternatives, but for most DIYers I think WordPress is the way to go.

In order to develop a web site there are some core decisions … [ Read more ]

Subject: Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

Regular expressions (abbreviated as regex or regexp) are used by many text editors, utilities, and programming languages (in our case, PHP) to search and manipulate text based on patterns, most notably the presence of particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Regular expressions are somewhat archaic in appearance and can be very intimidating to those not experienced in their use, but once you see how … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.), Useful Code, Tips & Tools

Do-It-Yourself Logo Design

I haven’t done research recently, but several years ago I was interested in making a logo by myself and I checked out quite a few DIY logo making software programs. In the end I chose The Logo Creator and I have since used it quite successfully many times. It’s not free, but it is inexpensive (US$47) and while I can’t say … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Graphics and Images, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

Update: If you are using WordPress, I have written what I think is the most comprehensive tutorial on optimizing PageSpeed for WordPress sites. Give it a read.

A key site design consideration is how big your page is since that will have a direct affect on how quickly it loads in visitors’ browsers. Slow load times are a primary cause of people abandoning a … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.), Site Optimization

There are quite a few good, free resources out there to help with your webmaster needs. Many are fully web-based. Some of the better ones I have come across include:

• iconifier.net
  This simple but useful site lets you upload a JPG, PNG or GIF image (up to 500KB) and then have it generate Apple and Favicon icons. This is one of my go-to sites,

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: Graphics and Images, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

If you are working with certain non-English languages, you will invariably have to consider the issue of character encoding. I myself run a website for Japanese language study, so I have dealt with this issue a bit, though I am far from truly knowledgeable about it. Still, maybe some of what I have learned will be of use to you.

Encoding Basics

Note: Most of … [ Read more ]

Subject: Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

Code writing tools range greatly – from the standard Notepad that comes with Windows to complex platform emulation tools. And then there is a vast land of what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) tools which provide fancy graphical user interfaces and drag-and-drop features to ease creation of code.

Do-It-Yourself Editors

It may seem odd to many that a bunch of webmasters, myself included, prefer to code without the aid of a … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Miscellaneous, Platform & Development Tools

• Remove or replace a block of text with definable starting and ending pattern.

  $temp = preg_replace(“‘

  ]*?>.*?

  ‘si”, “”, $temp);

• Modify group of links.
  This could be useful, for example, if you have links to multiple articles on a website that then redesigns and thus all its URLs change.

  $temp = preg_replace(“/(.*)/i”, “3“, $temp);

• What’s the easiest way to remove characters from the end of a

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: PHP, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

• The JavaScript Source (formerly JavaScripts.com)
  The JavaScript Source is a repository of free “cut and paste” JavaScript code, nicely organized by category. Some tutorials are available as well.
• Create a multi-state image toolbar on your Web site with this JavaScript guide
  This document guides you through the process of using JavaScript and the DOM to build a three-state toolbar that accurately and

… [ Read more ]

Subjects: JavaScript, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)

RSS is based on XML, a widely used standard for textual information exchange between applications on the Internet. RSS feeds can be viewed as plain text files, but they’re really designed for computer-to-computer communication.

RSS is actually just one standard for expressing feeds as XML, albeit the one most people are familiar with. Another popular standard is called Atom. You will notice that most websites … [ Read more ]

Subject: RSS and Atom

Advertising is the most obvious way to translate your site traffic into revenue and thanks to several useful middleman sites it is easier than ever, even for sites with smaller amounts of traffic. Below are some of the sites I have come across which might help you generate some income.
Cost Per Mille Impressions (CPM), Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and In-Text Ad … [ Read more ]

Subject: Monetizing Your Site

Any type of Web programming relies on the use of a platform, which consists of four major components: the operating system, the webserver technology, the underlying database, and the programming language. The platform I use and am semi-knowledgeable about is usually referred to as LAMP:

• Operating System: Linux or some other open-source version of Unix
• Webserver: Apache

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Platform & Development Tools

Depending on the code tool(s) you use, you may or may not need a dedicated transfer tool (since some tools include them already). Basically, the purpose of these tools is to transfer the code files you create from your computer to the server. FTP is the most common method used so that is what I will focus on. For what it’s worth, my favorite is SmartFTP.

… [ Read more ]

Subject: Platform & Development Tools

If you are using a hosted server (which I assume almost everyone reading this is), then you will occasionally need access to your server to perform some higher level development work. To do so, the most common tools are telnet and ssh (via a program like putty). These tools allow you to “tunnel” into your server account and perform tasks like manipulating files (change … [ Read more ]

Subject: Platform & Development Tools

Noupe offers up a nice selection of useful online tutorials for those interested in designing mobile friendly websites.

Subjects: Designing for Mobile Devices, Site Design (Architecture, Coding, UI, etc.)