If you are a web designer and haven’t visited Chris Coyier’s CSS-TRICKS, you definitely need to go immediately. Its a terrific resource!

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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I’m a Winner! CSS-TRICKS.COM Rocks!

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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New Archiving System for Blog

Today you are one year old.  Last November when I got the urge to start a blog I never thought it would have lasted this long.  Usually I don’t stick to things like this…but I am glad that I did.

In that year I have learned many things about you.  Some plugins cause you to get angry and others have you purring like they are supposed to.   Sometimes you bore your readers, I’m sure, but I still have faith in you and your ability to get the things on my mind out to people I have known or want to know.  You’ve somehow connected me with people I have never even met and caused me to learn things that I never thought I would be interested in.

Your “look” has changed a few times because of a fickle designer (me).  You aren’t perfect yet, and I am not sure you ever will be, but I’ve got big plans for you nonetheless.

Happy Birthday, Blog.

Nick

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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Happy Birthday, Blog. You’re One!

The following books have truly changed the way I look at website design.

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond

Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition)

Stylin’ with CSS: A Designer’s Guide (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design (VOICES)

CSS Web Site Design Hands on Training (Hands-On Training)

I highly recommend these books to any web designer, skilled or otherwise. They will give you a grasp on emerging ideas and technologies and will shape the way you design any future websites.

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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CSS & SEO Ain’t So Scary: A List of Resources

When are marketers going to realize that paper is the way of the dinosaur? When is the last time you went to the phone book to look something up? I can’t remember the last time I did. When I want to know the phone number of a restaurant or a store I go directly to my friend named THE INTERNET! People spend thousands and thousands of dollars on print marketing and I am a firm believer that they are wasting their money.

Another thing about print ads is that when a marketer spends money on print, they have no idea if their marketing attempts are being seen. There is no way to track who is looking at what and for how long. Web advertising, however, gives you more info! There are groovy little web applications that track how many people clicked on your ad, how long the people were on your site, where they went on your site, if they bought something from your site, etc. The list goes on and on. This is the way to go people. Spend your money on web advertising…your ROI (Return on Investment) will be much better…I guarantee it!

As soon as my new phone book gets here, it is going directly into the recycle bin. By keeping it in my house I am allowing for the continued existence of phone books. Its kind of like keeping your VCR and watching tapes on it when you have access to a DVD player.

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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The Yellow Pages Are So 2000

So to make a long story short, Google made me look really smart even though I didn’t know the answer in my head.  Thanks Google!

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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Google is your Friend, People!

I realize that these are pretty basic and also understand that some people may disagree with these suggestions, but of all the reading I have done, these are some that have kept repeating themselves.  Also keep in mind that there are TONS of other things that can be done to optimize your site.

1.  Always put ALT descriptions in your <image> tags.  Describe the image briefly and make sure to use a keyword in there.

2. Put title attributes on your href links.  Another place to add descriptions of the links.  Use a keyword too!!

3. On links that go from your site to another site, make sure you set the REL attribute to “nofollow”.

4.  Splash pages or intro pages typically have no valuable information for search engines to index.  If at all possible do not include one on your site.  Instead have an index page that is saturated with relevant information about your site.

5.  Do not hide text in images.  Text in images (gifs, pngs, jpegs, etc) can not be read by the search engine spiders!!  Use HTML text instead. 

6.  Some SEO experts say that using keywords in your file names helps.  For example: keyword.gif or keyword.html.

7.  META keyword tags aren’t as important as they used to be apparently…META Description tags, are though!  Make sure to use a few keywords in there and also make sure that you use those keywords in the text of the page.  Another important thing I have read about META tags is that you should not have the same META description tag on any page of your site.  Keep them different!

8.  Make a site map that showcases all of your pages.  Use href text links to describe them.  Start with the broadly descriptive pages and move towards more specific pages towards the bottom.

9.  The important words.  IN BOUND LINKS!!!  Get as many good links to your site as possible.

Also…here are some great links of resources to help you with Search Engine Optimization.  If you are truly interested in learning more, these are the sites to follow.  TOns of great information.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

http://www.searchengineland.com/

http://www.seroundtable.com/

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

http://www.seomoz.com

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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SEO Bonanza

Read on if you are interested in learning why…if you don’t, my feelings won’t be hurt.

RSS means Really Simple Syndication.  What is it though?  RSS is a simple way to gather posts from multiple actively posted websites into one location.  It’s sort of like a one-stop shop for blog reading freaks (like me).

For months I have been jumping from site to site trying to get my fix on all my favorite blogs all while pulling my hair out because of the length of time it takes.  I had to open up my list of favorites, navigate to the first blog, read it, open up my favorites again, navigate to the next one, read it, etc., etc., etc.  Enter the feed reader. 

A feed reader is a way to consolidate all of the blogs you are interested so that you can read them in one place.  Brilliant, I tell you!  I feel like an idiot for not taking advantage of this sooner.All you have to do is sign up for a free feed reading service (see below for links), then subscribe to your favorite blogs by entering their feed URL (found easily on most blogs) and viola…you are well on your way to reducing your time spent navigating to the sites.  As new posts are made to the respective blogs, you will get an alert in your feed reader interface that allows you to read the new post(s) right there! Feed readers are the way to go… I highly recommend them.Here are some links to free RSS aggregators.

www.google.com/reader www.feedreader.com

Post from my blog: A Guy Called Nick: My Thoughts, My Experiences, My Life
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Feed Readers: Take Advantage of Them!