With CMS (content management system) frameworks popping up everywhere and blog platforms making it as easy as 1,2,3 for practically anybody to have an online presence, consumers need to be aware that not all website development is the same.

The accessibility of your website and the semantics of the (HTML/XHTML) markup can make or break your search engine exposure.

What is an accessible website?

The accessibility of your website has to do with the way it appears to both the search engines and your users. If you are using older technologies like frames for your website development, then bots or search engine crawlers are not able to index your content at all because they can’t see what’s inside a frame.

Frames aren’t really used too much these days, but their slightly newer counterpart tables are still very rampant on the internet. Tables can be ok, but depending on how complicated your layout becomes, bots can have problems indexing multiple nested tables.

There are a whole assortment of technologies and methods that can inhibit your site’s exposure and it’s important to get involved with a website development firm that knows their way around accessibility.

Accessibility Scenarios

Example 1

Let’s say your company relies on local search engine traffic and you offer coupons online for more incentive. If your address and pertinent company info happens to be in a deeply nested table then that info is going to have a hard time getting indexed.

If I need your services, but have no idea your company exists, then searching for you online becomes incredibly hard because of this outdated development method.

Example 2

Let’s say you just had a brand new site developed with all the latest cutting edge features, super-smooth accordions that gracefully open and close, creating eye candy up the wazoo with AJAX-y goodness.

But, bots and crawlers don’t have javascript enabled so it’s impossible for them to index your content. Your brand new site is now inaccessible.

Example 3

The document outline is a quick indicator of the content structure of your web page. You can find the document outline of any web page with the help of the web developer toolbar for Firefox.

Ideally your document outline should represent a well thought-out outline. The document outline is derived from the markup and structure you use for your website.

Bad HTML markup = bad document outline

The image above shows both the way the site looks to users as well as the document outline used by the search engines. As you can see to a regular user, everything looks fine, but the information given to search engines in the document outline has no value at all.

Good HTML markup = good document outline

This image represents a good outline to both users and search engines. The development of this site is the best that it can be. While the actual content on the page may need updated over time, the structure and code are set for years.

If your document outline is out of whack; or worse, non-existent, then your site is going to have trouble getting good rankings.

Accessible websites that are built with web standards are few and far between these days. More developers are becoming aware of these techniques but it’s the consumers who need to be knowledgeable.

No matter what you pay for your website, wouldn’t you like people to find it on the search engines?

Have you run into other situations where your site has had trouble getting indexed and crawled? Let me know in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: website development, web standards, semantic markup

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Why the Development of Your Website Matters

Here’s a quick look at the sections of the guide:

1. Introduction: Setup
2. The Site Overlay Report
3. Visitors: Map Overlay
4. Content: Top Content
5. Ecommerce: Overview
6. Content: Site Search
7. Identifying and Setting up Goals
8. Goals and Funnel Visualization Report
9. Traffic Sources: All Traffic Sources
10. Traffic Sources: AdWords
11. Tracking Error 404 Pages and Broken Links
12. Tracking Slow Loading Times

Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide

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The Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide - VKI Studios Blog

Browser Shots is the tool for you. A free service that allows you to review your site in dozens and dozens of different browsers and specific versions of each browser.

Next time you need to test the way your site looks across the board, go to Browser Shots.

Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test - Browsershots

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Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test - Browsershots

To tell you honestly, from that day onwards, I have been in a habit of observing logo designs of various companies on all such occasions and enjoy the way they play with it according to the occasion. So let me share the ones I have come across by Google, Yahoo!, AOL, YouTube, ASK and Orkut! on different days and events.

Earth Day Logos

Earth day is celebrated all across the world on the 22nd of April every year. It is a day dedicated to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. With respect to that, companies like Google, Yahoo!, AOL, ASK come up with creatively designed logos to display on their websites every year.

Google has been doing this since 2001, with their first Google doodle celebrating Earth day which looked like this:

I was greatly amused to see how Google replaced the alphabet ‘O’ with ‘earth’ to depict this day very clearly. It was simple though and the fact that they stuck to their basic logo design and colors, yet it explained very well that its Earth day. Google doodles, are however, always static unlike other companies, who design flashy animated logos on such events and occasions.

In 2007, Google designed yet another logo for earth day, which too was very impactful:

The above logo by Google on earth day depicted a melting iceberg. This logo was found to be the best amongst the two other logos created by Yahoo! and Ask.

Later on, in 2008, Denis Hwang , the doodler behind all those Google doodles created a very serene logo depicted Earth day.

This logo by Google was indeed very refreshing and amazingly done. The serene environment created to form the best possible logo for earth day with rocks, greenery, waterfall, tortoise and mountains, all put together to craft this imaginative logo. I was literally fascinated and enthralled after seeing this logo.

Similarly, Yahoo! came up with a logo on Earth day which was different in a way that it wasn’t static, but animated. Yahoo! designed different logos customized for different countries for this day. The one shown right below is for Taiwan. Yahoo! customized the logo by incorporating ‘Earth day’ written in Taiwan’s own dialect. They created an Earth day environment by showing lamp, fan and earth etc. The concept however was very cool, they showed that it’s better to consume less energy and produce less heat to save the earth.

In 2007, Yahoo! also came up with a logo specially designed for earth day. In this logo, they converted their exclamation mark (!) into an energy saving light bulb which was powered by the windmill created with the letter ‘Y’. It was an attractive logo, yet Google took all the applause for its iceberg logo.

Later in 2008, Yahoo! designed an earth day logo which was animated and all green. This logo was very simple, yet it conveyed the message very clearly through its design concept.

However, in the same year Ask also came up with a logo designed for earth day but it didn’t leave a strong impression since it wasn’t well designed and changed much according to the day.

AOL too took part in this race of logo embellishing and came up with this:

It was a good effort by AOL but can’t be compared with Google.

Halloween Logos

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints’ Day. It is largely a secular celebration, but some Christians and pagans have expressed strong feelings about its religious overtones.

Let’s start with Google, how in 2007, they came up with such a fascinating logo:

It was great to see such a beautifully designed logo; it had all the elements that could best possibly define Halloween.

Similarly, yahoo! in the same year designed an animated logo for that holiday with real skeletons haunted by made up spooky skeletons. It was really a good effort.

In 2007, AOL designed a special Halloween logo by putting in a special Halloween pumpkin. Though, the entire logo wasn’t changed much.

Father’s Day Logos

Father’s Day is a day honoring fathers, celebrated on various days in many places around the world. See how Google and Yahoo! celebrated it with sheer enthusiasm and zeal through their logos.

Valentine’s Day Logos

According to Wikipedia, Valentine’s Day or Saint Valentine’s Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending Valentine’s cards, presenting flowers, or offering confectionery.

Have a look at how Google, Yahoo!, Orkut, YouTube and AOL have designed their logos just to give it a Valentine touch.

In this one, Google simply embellished the logo with a bunch of roses and a ribbon with rose petals on it. The rest of the logo was as it is.

This Valentine logo was made by Yahoo! especially for its Japanese website with hearts, angel and lovers.

Orkut made a simple yet cute looking logo on Valentine’s. It changed the font type and the colors especially for this day with it’s ‘O’ converted to a heart with an arrow.

YouTube simply added a rose to its existing logo on Valentine’s Day.

AOL changed the color of its existing logo and added roses in it to give it a Valentine’s Day look.

This was all from my side for now. However, I will definitely find more and share them with you. My point to share this with you is to let you know the importance of giving your logo the look according to special days, events and occasions in order to increase the visibility and the importance of it. As you have already see, internet giants like Google, Yahoo, AOL, so on and so forth had taken this initiative way back and now their logos are known for their creativity and uniqueness on different days. Let me know, how do you like the post and do share with us, the logo designs specially designed on different occasions. It would be great to see if you are a business owner and you have designed your logo especially on any occasion. Our comments section awaits your feedback.

This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

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Let us all celebrate like them!

Here you can watch designers go head to head battling on the holy grounds of photoshop and illustrator.

They have matches every week so be sure and check’em out. Always a good source of inspiration.

Check out some Layer Tennis.

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Layer Tennis

Social media is all about getting involved with other members of the community and interacting with them. Whether you’re a cyclist, fortune 500 CEO, or candle maker…social media has a place for you.

The confusion comes when people don’t know how to optimize their social media campaign. Remember that, in the vast majority of situations, the main purpose of social media is to drive traffic back to your website, not your twitter account.

I see a lot of people add their twitter and facebook accounts to email signatures and link from one social media account to another, but they never mention their own website. If I’m on your facebook page, I don’t want to have to go to your twitter account to try and find the link to your website that may or may not even be there. You’re asking a lot of me, and the chances that I’m going to continue hunting for your links gets slimmer the more places you send me.

Businesses spend a lot of time creating products, writing content, and developing websites. At the end of the day we hope that people visit our work and possibly talk about it. It’s important to make sure that while we’re getting caught up in the excitement of social media, we’re also keeping in mind that the goal is to send traffic back to our sites.

So keep tweeting all day and friending everyone you know on facebook, but make sure you’re making the most of these opportunities by continuing to communicate about the new content or unique features on your website.

If you’d like to see how I use twitter and facebook as part of a comprehensive online strategy, please feel free to follow me @DrewStauffer or friend me on facebook.

What are some other ways you use social media for the benefit of your business? Let me know in the comments below.

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Optimizing Your Social Media

Take a look at a few of these easy examples and learn how to bring depth and detail into your next website.

I have been using these techniques for many years and their all super simple. Once you incorporate them into your arsenal you’ll wonder how you ever designed a site without them.

5 Pixel Popping Techniques

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5 Pixel Popping Techniques - Tutorial9

Avinash Kaushik from Google goes over some easy ways to look at your website’s analytics and immediately discover which pages are causing your bounce rate to increase.

Once you know which pages are bringing you down, you can adjust your campaign accordingly.

How to Analyze and Improve Bounce Rates

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How to Analyze and Improve Bounce Rates

Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet

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Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Tweet

What you need to also know is that some URL shortening services are better than others when it comes to your SEO.

Check out Danny Sullivan’s review of 15 URL shortening services to find out which ones can benefit you the most.

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How URL Shortening is Affecting Your SEO

All the presenters did a great job and the audience was very enthusiastic which always makes a workshop more enjoyable. For more info and pictures check out The Brand Builder.

For all you SEO’s out there, Amy Wood gave a great tip on how to get the news to cover your stories. On the WSPA website there is a section called “You Write It” where you can submit your own stories and if deemed worthy can get covered. Keep in mind it might not make the 6′oclock news, but the staff and crew  have many various platforms that they publish news on including news blogs, personal blog and of course social media arenas.

Now for a Bonus

Anyone who comments on this post will also get another free tip from me on how to use Flickr to generate more traffic and buzz to your website. Just comment below and I’ll send you an email.

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Greenville Social Media

It’s obviously not rocket science, but this online calculator sure does make it easy to get a grid setup with any number of columns, column widths, and gutter widths.

Grid Calculator

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Grid Calculator

A lot of people and companies will register multiple domains and redirect them to one primary domain. One reason might be misspellings of the company or person’s name or maybe even typos.

Find out from Matt Cutts when enough is enough.

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Google Defines 301 Quantities

Anyone who is involved in social media knows that its very hard to track what is and isn’t working and why to keep doing it.

Here is a great guide that can give you more insight into what metrics are worth tracking so that you can make the most of your social media efforts.

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10 ways to measure social media success

Check out this 20 minute directors cut video from Matt Cutts after his SMX West presentation.

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Explanation of Canonical Link Element

My freelance hours are limited to say the least and choosing the right type of client is just as important as getting new clients. I’ve been looking into customer relationship management applications to see if that might be a solution for developing a more established, organized approach to supplemental income.

For the most part many of these applications do a lot more than what I need as a single freelancer, but I do like their approach to crm as it pertains to my analytics. Analytics are such a huge part of a successful business online and a lot of people do not absorb that information as well as they could. You need to not only know where and how your clients are finding you, but which keywords are converting into sales more so than others.

Taking advantage of lead management software can really help organize your business and make sure that you are following through on every possible lead that comes your way. This really looks like  something that I am going to try out in the future and I’m anxious to see how well it can work.

If you have tried or have any thoughts about crm products please let me know in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: customer relationship management, crm, analytics, lead management software

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Taking Care of Business

This goes right along with spam emails about getting your site to the top of Google and all the major search engines in a week.

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The 50 Dollar Logo Experiment

Creating your website on a grid is one of the fastest and easiest ways. Check out the grid system for helpful articles and templates to get you started.

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The Grid System

I’d like to throw out a big thanks to Douglas Bowman and Pablo Gomez for their help with the customization of Pablo’s Postalicious plugin.

Pablo’s plugin is a fantastic way to keep your blog updated with links from your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks and I highly suggest it.

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A Big Thanks

I’ve been hacked twice in the past 16 months, and the first time it happened, I was extremely scared, nervous and pissed all at the same time. The second time around I was able to handle the situation with a little more composure.

***NOTE: I believe I keep getting hacked because I haven’t done a very good job of keeping my WP up-to-date. Keeping WP up-to-date is your first and best defense, but if it happens…read on.

One of the first things that comes to my mind when I run across that horrible “You’ve been hacked” message on my homepage is concern about being able to retrieve all of my posts. Ideally you should be continually backing up your WP database to keep all of your posts and comments stored. Depending on how often you post on your blog will determine how often you should update your database. I only write between two and four posts a month and I try to back up my database once a month. That way if for some reason I lose all my posts, I’ve really only lost the ones since my last back up. If I posted five times a day, I would maybe backup the database twice a week. It basically comes down to how many posts you think you can afford to lose. There are a few plugins that make backing up your database easier but you can also go the manual route.

Steps to getting your blog back

So my first step in getting my blog back to normal was to make sure I had all my posts backed up. As soon as I realized I got hacked, I tried to log into my dashboard. No luck; can’t get to that page.

Since I had no access to anything WP, I had to back things up manually. I logged into my cPanel and went through the steps for backing the database through phpAdmin. Luckily with the type of hack that got my site, all of my posts were intact.

Once I was able to download multiple versions of my database (just in case one doesn’t work for some odd reason) I was able to move onto getting my blog back to normal.

You’ll also want to make a copy of the themes that you are using because you’ll have to upload those as well. If you have FTP access you can download them from your site, or you might already have them on your system.

When I was researching how to handle a hacked website, I ran across several articles that mentioned looking for specific php code snippets on certain pages. I didn’t like this method because it could mean hours of searching through code and possibly never resolving the issue. So I went another route.

Download the newest Wordpress

I went and downloaded the newest version of WP.  Since I don’t know how hacks work and what files they use, for me, the best alternative was to re-upload almost everything and overwrite the existing files.

The wp-config file has all of your settings that connect your blog to your database so you need to make sure this file is updated before you upload the new files.

Here’s what you do:

1. Open the new wp-sample-config file from the new WP download.
2. Open your old wp-config file.
3. Update the new wp-sample-config file with the settings from your old wp-config file and save it as wp-config.

Uploading your new WordPress

Now you can safely upload your new WordPress and hopefully all of your posts will still be on your site. If they’re not, you’ll need to look into restoring your database from a backup.

Depending on which version of WP your updating from you might have to upgrade your database, but WP should walk you through those few quick steps.

Here is a detailed guide on installing WordPress and upgrading WordPress if you need it.

You’ll then need to upload any root level files you might have. I have a robots.txt file, my .htaccess file, and a few others that support the performance of the site.

Check your site to make sure all posts come up and links work before moving on.

Getting your themes and styles back

Whenever I go through something like this I make sure and go very slowly and update only a few things at a time. You want to make it easy on yourself. If you upload a bunch of files and then realize the site doesn’t work, then you need to go back through every file. If you only upload one thing at a time, then you can easily remove the one corrupted file and keep moving.

By now you should have a base WP install. All of your existing posts are on the site, but now you need to upload your previous theme because WP is using one of the default themes.

Upload your previous theme only. Don’t upload any of your plugins yet. It was noted in some of the “getting hacked” articles I read that hacker code can be placed in plugins, so we’ll get to those in a few minutes.  Upload your theme and activate it, then check your site and multiple pages to make sure everything looks good.

Adding the bells and whistles

Now you should have your existing theme and your posts back, so it’s time get all of your plugins working again.

If it was me, and it was me last week, I would upload each plugin one by one just to be on the safe side.

1. Upload the plugin
2. Activate the plugin through the dashboard
3. Test the site and multiple pages before moving on to the next plugin.
4. Rinse and repeat until you have your blog back to normal.

I know this might sound like a lot of steps but I was able to get my blog back in about an hour, once I finally realized what I needed to do.

In a way this hacker actually helped because it made me clean up my system and files. I previously had about 30 plugins uploaded but wasn’t using a lot of them. It was always confusing which ones I had tried and which ones I disliked.  I removed all the unused files and my dashboard has never looked so clean J.

Getting hacked is never a good feeling, but don’t let it overwhelm you. All you need to do is follow a few steps and you can get your site back and running smoothly.

On a side note, if anyone notices something that looks broken or not how it used to look before, please let me know in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: hack, hacked, WordPress, WP

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Got Hacked? How to Get Back on Track