Development has begun on a customizeable, portable search application for my clients. The main benefit of the application is that it can be tuned to many kinds of domain-specific search applications (e.g., corporate, personal, internet, vertical search, general search) as well as containing search engine tools such as a crawler. The application will be utilizing the recently released Zend Lucene Search component and Lucene.
Though there will be many out of the box features, the goal is to keep it as simple as possible so if customizations are required, which almost always are, then the code can be extended easily to fit a clients needs.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Turn That 404 Into a WOW
We have all seem them. Either the page has been moved, never been there or a weary developer has "fat-fingered" the text to their myspace page, but that is no reason to have a bad experience to go along with your request.
Worth A Read
Most industries have journals/periodicals that deal with the current trends in that particular industry. Unfortunately, I have been hard pressed to find the quanity of quality reading material that other industry professionals enjoy, i.e. Health, Financial, and Fashion. However, the few gems of literary noting are AIGA, php|arch and Practical WebDesign (from the makers of .net magazine). In the summer issue of Practical WebDesign(issue 166) some of the most note worth articles are "Build and eBay Empire", "Design Effective Layouts", "Build a Social Network".
Caching On RSS
We hold these truths to be self evident...you WILL pay taxes, you WILL eventually die, and the customer is ALWAYS right. It doesn't matter how strong you are eventually your body will give out, not matter how rich and powerful you are, the IRS just wants (and will get) its cut and finally not matter what business you are if the customer isn't happy then your business will fail.
What makes our customer's happy is having a website that performs well. This usually falls into different categories. It must have good design, usability and backend performance. In corywiles.com's ongoing effort to make the website and our client's webites perform as best as it possibly can I have added a new feature to the RSS feeds at the bottom of the site. (Made possibe by our good friends over at Zend)
Though the concept of caching has been around as long as computing itself, I have seen too many times where frequently requested content/widgets/applications are not cached. Don't be a victim of poor website performance. Insist that your web developer has cache on hand.
What makes our customer's happy is having a website that performs well. This usually falls into different categories. It must have good design, usability and backend performance. In corywiles.com's ongoing effort to make the website and our client's webites perform as best as it possibly can I have added a new feature to the RSS feeds at the bottom of the site. (Made possibe by our good friends over at Zend)
Though the concept of caching has been around as long as computing itself, I have seen too many times where frequently requested content/widgets/applications are not cached. Don't be a victim of poor website performance. Insist that your web developer has cache on hand.
Code Unlimited is Live
There has been a delay of updates lately because I am have been working on finishing up a website for a client. The goal for the client was to have a site that would promote their medical coding school. The site is a large term project that is going to go through three phases.
The first phase (which is now live) is to establish a web presence with prominently static content for students (past, current, and future). The second phase is to integrate feature rich interactive applications that will aid instructors and students during their courses. These applications include, but are not limited to, course material download, online form registration as well as student account management. The final phase is slated to have all the courses available online as well as added functionality to the student account management area to allow to see their current grades and take tests online in addition to student collaboration.
View Codes Unlimited
The first phase (which is now live) is to establish a web presence with prominently static content for students (past, current, and future). The second phase is to integrate feature rich interactive applications that will aid instructors and students during their courses. These applications include, but are not limited to, course material download, online form registration as well as student account management. The final phase is slated to have all the courses available online as well as added functionality to the student account management area to allow to see their current grades and take tests online in addition to student collaboration.
View Codes Unlimited
Practice What You Link
I have noticed a growing trend of companies to create positions to handle the strategic direction for search engine optimization. (Man that was mouthful). Most small business, like the ones I mostly do business with, can't afford to hire someone fulltime to handle this responsibility. So, they outsource these duties to a consultant. More times than not, the consultants themselves can't tell you strategies or tatics that you can't find yourself with a little bit of research and a lot less cost.
One of the common tips that you will come across is making all of your URLs SEF (Search Engine Friendly). Like most things computing, SEF can have different connotations. The most basic of which has to do with the removal of query strings. Let's look at a common scenrio:
You have a gallery of images that have mulitple pages. The url for the first page might be, http://somehost.com/portfolio/. When search engines crawl through your site they will index the content found on that page. When the user clicks on page 2 of your portfolio site then the url might look something like this: http://somehost.com/portfolio/index.php?start=2&page=2. Though that link has different content, it never gets index because Google, Yahoo!, etc. see the same page (index.php) linked again.
Solution:
Using mod_rewrite (Apache) a developer can 'reconstruct' the urls to make sure that crawlers/spiders will index the content that is found on these subsequent pages. The url for the above example might look like this: http://somehost.com/portfolio/start/2/page/2.
Like anything else search engine optimization can get quite detailed and fine grained, but so can mathematics, but most people are very successful knowing the basic arethemitc, not quantum physics.
For further information on basic tips to help optimize your current site please visit any of the links below.
The Beginners Guid to Top Google Rankings
Pagination Gallery Examples and Good Practices
Google
Search Engine Optimization
One of the common tips that you will come across is making all of your URLs SEF (Search Engine Friendly). Like most things computing, SEF can have different connotations. The most basic of which has to do with the removal of query strings. Let's look at a common scenrio:
You have a gallery of images that have mulitple pages. The url for the first page might be, http://somehost.com/portfolio/. When search engines crawl through your site they will index the content found on that page. When the user clicks on page 2 of your portfolio site then the url might look something like this: http://somehost.com/portfolio/index.php?start=2&page=2. Though that link has different content, it never gets index because Google, Yahoo!, etc. see the same page (index.php) linked again.
Solution:
Using mod_rewrite (Apache) a developer can 'reconstruct' the urls to make sure that crawlers/spiders will index the content that is found on these subsequent pages. The url for the above example might look like this: http://somehost.com/portfolio/start/2/page/2.
Like anything else search engine optimization can get quite detailed and fine grained, but so can mathematics, but most people are very successful knowing the basic arethemitc, not quantum physics.
For further information on basic tips to help optimize your current site please visit any of the links below.
The Beginners Guid to Top Google Rankings
Pagination Gallery Examples and Good Practices
Search Engine Optimization
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
And the Sites Keep Coming
It is important to always keep the content of your site updated and fresh. Though it has been a little while since I have last updated the news I have plenty of updates today. Since our last post many exciting things have happened in the wide world of the web development.
The great guys and gals over at Zend have release version 1.5 of their framework, which is powering more and more of my sites including this one, as well as the release of Joomla! 1.5. In my opinion if open source web projects could be super heoros then they would be Batman and Wolverine...respectively.
I have been very busy finishing up two sites as well as providing collaboration and development support for another. For further details of the sites please check out the updated portfolio.
The great guys and gals over at Zend have release version 1.5 of their framework, which is powering more and more of my sites including this one, as well as the release of Joomla! 1.5. In my opinion if open source web projects could be super heoros then they would be Batman and Wolverine...respectively.
I have been very busy finishing up two sites as well as providing collaboration and development support for another. For further details of the sites please check out the updated portfolio.
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