Tag Archives: General

7 Books For Beginning Webmasters

Jul 9, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Featured, General 3 Comments

Are you just getting starting as a webmaster/blogger? Are you a little clueless when it comes to HTML? Need a primer on RSS feeds? It looks like you should read some books. The web is a great source for information, though sometimes it’s better to read a good old-fashion book.

How did I get to where I am today? I learned everything I know about the workings of the web from books and websites. I learned about HTML and CSS in books, I picked-up a little PHP in a book…then learned the rest online.

If you’re getting started as a webmaster, I highly recommend the following books.

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North X East

Jul 4, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General No Comments

Are you a blogger? Whether you’re new to blogging, or you’ve been blogging for years, you should take a look at North X East. Once or twice a week, a nice informative article is posted, going in-depth on a blogging-related topic.

I often find myself waiting anxiously for another article to be posted (much like I do with Smashing Magazine).

Google Custom Search or Direct Database Search?

Jun 30, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Services and Tools One Comment

Here’s an important question: Should you use Google Custom Search (GCS) on your site? Or would it be better to directly search your database.

It depends on your point of view. Some bloggers use GCS, while others use their blog software’s built-in search tool (which acceses the database and searches it). Which should you use? Let’s take a closer look at each option.

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Creating a Favicon

Jun 28, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Design 4 Comments

A Favicon, as you may already know, is that tiny icon that sits to the left of a web site’s URL in modern browsers (and in your bookmarks menu). Usually they’re 16×16 pixels in dimensions. Want to learn how to make one for your website?

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Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival

Jun 25, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General No Comments

Webmaster-Source will be hosting the first edition of the “Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival” (deadline July 16th).

If you have written any blog posts recently that may be of interest to webmasters/bloggers, feel free to submit them.

We accept virtually any submission, so long as it fits into the topics of blogging, web design, making money off your website, getting more visitors, or just “General Blogging”.

The deadline’s July 16th.

AjaxLoad: Free “Throbber” Image Generator

Jun 25, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Services and Tools 2 Comments

Attention AJAX programmers! Do you need a good “loading image” (or “throbber”)? Take a look at AjaxLoad.info, the only throbber-image generator I know of (as of this writing). You pick an image style, then enter some hex odes for the foreground and background colors. Hit the generate button, and if you like what you see, download the animated GIF. Simple, or what? Here are some examples:

Those are just a few examples of what AjaxLoad can do.

Google Apps

Jun 16, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Services and Tools No Comments

So, you’ve got yourself a domain. Sure, it helps people get to your website, but what else can you use it for? Google’s got the answer. Do you hate your webhost’s webmail program? Do you like GMail? Well, now you can have your own copy of GMail (with 100 free email accounts)….but at your own domain. That’s right, you can have your own mini-GMail with email addresses resembling you@yourdomain.com. You get more than just email, but the email’s the best part. Forget your host’s SquirrelMail system, switch to Google Apps.

Tables Aren’t Dead Yet

Jun 16, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Design 2 Comments

Rarely does a day go by without someone bashing table-based design. Not long after the HTML <table> element was introduced, people started using it to lay-out their web pages. Before the days of CSS, people used tables so they could have sidebars and such.

Nowadays, we have Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS for short. With CSS, you can make amazing designs like the ones seen on Digg, The Leaky Cauldron, North X East, or Ars Technica. With a lot of effort, you can pull-off designs like that.

Table-based layouts are far from dead however (despite some peoples’ ravings). Take a look at TemplatesBox, one of the largest and most popular places to get free site templates. Notice that all of the pre-sliced ones are done with tables? There’s no doubt that tables are easier to implement, despite the advantages of CSS. There still quite a few major websites still using tables for layouts. Ever heard of Mugglenet? It’s the second-oldest Harry Potter news site. They’re pretty big, but not Yahoo-big. Would you have guessed that the shopping-giant Amazon had a table-based design? They do.

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Customize Feedburner’s Subscriber Count Chicklet

Jun 13, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Coding No Comments

Are you using Feedburner? North X East has an excellent tutorial on customizing the Feedburner Subscriber Count Chicklet. Using a WordPress plugin, and a bit of CSS, you can go from the default chicklet to something totally different. You didn’t honestly think you were stuck with the default one, did you? It doesn’t look good with very many site designs. If you’re a Feedburner-using WordPress blogger, take a look at the tutorial. Also note this: If you have less than 30 people subscribing to your feed, It’s perhaps better to not show-off your subscriber count. You don’t want to look like a puny blog, do you?

Socialinks v.2

Jun 8, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts No Comments

Nearly every blog, or blog-like site, on the web offers several icons that allow you to submit their articles to Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and other “social bookmarking” sites. Have you wanted an easy way to add icons like that to your blog? Enter Socialinks v.2. Pick the social bookmarking services you want, enter some data, and you can download a bit of javascript code to paste into your blog template. There’s also an optional WordPress plugin available on the site.

Just so you know, the “infos” fields are the places where you paste you’re blog’s template tags. For example, if you have a blogger blog, you’d paste <$BlogItemPermalinkURL$> into the “url” field.

This site is a great way to add social bookmarking links to your site.